
Class- 

Book 

Gfpght'N? 



c.oKRiGar DEPosm 



Sources of Faith and Hope 



A Study of the Soul 



BY 



HERBERT H. MOTT 




BOSTON 
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 

25 BEACON STREET 






Copyright, 1916, by 
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 



All rights reserved 




NOV -4 !9!6 



2CI.A445493 



To 
MARY E. HUNT 

and 
ELIZABETH R. BROWN 

This book is gratefully inscribed 



FOREWORD 



"The most effective and certain deliverance of men 
from their self inflicted calamities, and from the most 
dreadful of all calamities, war, is attainable not by 
any external general measures, but by that simple 
appeal to the consciousness of each separate individ- 
ual, proposed by Jesus nineteen hundred years ago, 
that every man bethink himself , and ask himself who 
he is, why he lives, and what he should and should 
not do." 

Tolstoy. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

1. The Soul 1 

%. The Soul and the Body 6 

3. The Soul and the World 17 

4. The Power behind the Soul and the World 23 

5. Soul and Oversoul 64 

6. The Conduct of the Soul 81 

I. The Soul's Quest. 

II. The Soul's Dilemma. 

III. The Easier Way. 

IV. Practical Consequences. 

7. The Destiny of the Soul 94 



SOURCES OF FAITH AND 
HOPE 

CHAPTER I * 
The Soul 

A Brahmin, seated by the sacred waters of the 
Ganges, called to his disciple. " Bring me fruit from 
yonder tree." The disciple obeyed. 

"Cut it in two, what do you find?" 

"Some small seeds, O Master." 

"Break open one of them, what is there?" 

"Nothing," replied the youth. 

"Where you see nothing," said the Brahmin, 
"there dwells a mighty tree." 

As within the seed dwells the tree, so, within my 
body dwells a consciousness, a self, an "I". This is 
no delusion, no fancy. While I keep my reason, I 
am unable, even if I would, to doubt this feeling of 
selfhood. Of its actuality there is no question. 
Every one is aware of it. 

Here then, is something that cannot be otherwise, 
a fragment of reality, of truth, on which we may 
plant firmly our feet. This selfhood, this "I", is 
what we mean by the soul. 

Since it is neither to be seen, touched, weighed, 
nor measured, how can we know anything about the 



% SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

soul? I know of it whatsoever I know of myself, for 
my soul is myself. About myself, there are some 
things which I know at first hand. The knowledge is 
not of my seeking, but is given to me, and is con- 
firmed, corroborated, and made clearer, by experience. 

I know of myself, and therefore of my soul, that 
I am alive. "What shall we do with you when you 
are dead?" asked the friends of Socrates just before 
the hemlock was handed to him. His answer was, 
"Anything you like, provided you can catch me." 

When a man dies, something escapes. The body 
lies inert and motionless. Speak to it, there is no 
answer. Touch it, there is no response. That which 
was alive, is gone. Never in the history of the race 
has a human body been known to retain its life after 
it had lost its soul. The soul is a principal and power 
of life. 

I know of myself, and therefore of my soul, that I 
think, feel, act. The body which loses its soul, loses, 
together with its life, its power to think, feel, act. 

Through nave and transept, and along the vaulted 
roof of the cathedral, the organ music rolls. Pipes, 
keys, stops, pedals, are all at work, yet they are no 
musicians. They are mute and dead. By them- 
selves, they can do nothing. They are merely ma- 
chinery. It is the organist who makes the music, it 
is he who thinks, feels, acts, and by means of the 
mechanism of his organ conveys his thoughts, feel- 
ings, acts, to the listening congregation. 

What the organist is to the organ, the soul is to 
the body. Of itself, the body can do nothing. It is 
no more than a beautiful piece of mechanism. The 
thinker, feeler, doer, is the mind, the living person, 
the soul. 

I know of myself, and therefore of my soul, that 



THE SOUL 3 

through all bodily changes I continue, and remain at 
heart unchanged. 

I feel as if I existed continuously. As far back as 
memory goes I had this feeling. I cannot recollect 
all the way back. I existed before I remember that I 
existed. Of this unremembered existence I learn 
through the memory of other people. 

At the beginning of infancy, my soul lay in its 
envelope of flesh, as a seed lies in the soil. Then at 
some moment in the infant's career, a point was 
reached when memory awoke. The soul-embryo, 
germinated, and put forth, so to speak, the first green 
shoots of consciousness. 

Since that fateful moment I have possessed always, 
the sense of continuousness. Periods of unconscious- 
ness have intervened, but never have such periods 
broken the thread of my being. I awake from a 
night's sleep, or from the effects of an anesthetic, the 
same identical individual I was before. 

Now, if there were no soul, if there were nothing 
more within than a succession of separate states of 
consciousness, a series of mental moods, each mood 
divided from the one going before and from the one 
coming after, how could a sense of continuousness 
ever arise? Is it not absurd to suppose that a con- 
tinuous state could be obtained out of states that 
were not continuous? 

This feeling of retained identity, is itself the best 
of evidence that behind our separate sensations is a 
feeler, a thinker, feeling and thinking continuously, 
a continuously existing soul. 

We are not left merely to infer this from the weight 
of evidence. In addition to feeling as if I existed 
continuously, I know it, with a knowledge I cannot 



4 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

even if I would deny, for it is a knowledge impressed 
upon me by my sense of moral responsibility. 

Twenty years ago I did a mean thing. Today 
when I think of it I feel ashamed. I should like to be 
able to believe I am not the one who did that mean 
thing, but however hard I try I cannot get rid of the 
consciousness that I am today actually the same 
person I was then. Since then I have learned much, 
experienced much, my outward appearance has changed 
much, but I am inwardly the same person I was then. 
My sense of moral responsibility will not let me off. 

The soundness of this self-knowledge of mine is 
borne out by what is called "character." In a man 
of character we have an irrefutable witness to the 
truth that through every fluctuation of mental mood 
and outward condition, the soul remains at heart the 
same. A man of character stands steadfast, un- 
swerving from high principle, whatever be the changes 
of outward circumstance through which he passes. 

Here is an example. About the year 1891 a well 
known New York business man failed, owing his 
creditors a million dollars. 

6i Gentlemen," he said to them, "I will pay you 
with interest when I get on my feet again.' ' 

Such was their confidence in his character that they 
gave him a full release then and there, asking for no 
written acknowledgment, and he was immediately 
reelected a member of the Stock Exchange. 

No shrewder set of people exists than the mer- 
chants and brokers doing business on Wall Street, 
New York, yet they were willing to risk a million 
dollars on the security of character. 

We may be quite sure they would not have done so, 
had they not been convinced of their debtor's ability 
to remain firm and true to honorable principles; that 



THE SOUL 5 

is, to maintain an identical attitude of mind toward 
those principles no matter what changes of fortune 
he might experience. It is evident that a man cannot 
maintain an identical attitude of mind unless he him- 
self, as a soul, remains identical, at heart the same, 
through all fluctuations of mental moods and out- 
ward conditions. 

I know then, that I am alive, think, feel, act, and 
remain through all bodily changes, and through the 
changes of my own growth, essentially the same. 
These things I know also of my soul, for my soul is 
my inward self. 

Further knowledge of my soul I may acquire by 
observation and comparison, by reason and experi- 
ence, but this first hand knowledge I do not gain by 
my own efforts. It is bestowed upon me, more even 
than that, it is imposed. It is a gift I am not permitted 
to decline, I cannot continue to exist without becom- 
ing aware of these things. Experience arouses in me 
a consciousness of their truth. That I am alive, 
think, feel, act, and retain through all changes, my 
personal identity, are for me inexpugnable realities, 
and they are realities of the soul. 



CHAPTER II 

The Soul and the Body 

As the tree dwells in the seed, so the inward self, the 
soul, dwells in the outward self, the body. Neverthe- 
less, while inhabiting a tenement of clay the Thinker, 
the Feeler, does not consist of clay. Inner and outer 
are of distinct orders. Soul and body are made of 
different stuff. 

This corresponds with my personal sensations. 
As a result of these I find myself assuming that soul 
and body are in their respective natures poles assun- 
der. 

Often my soul has desired to achieve some hard 
task, but my muscles have proved unequal to the 
strain. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. 

It is with difficulty that my limbs move at more 
than four or five miles an hour, while my soul has no 
difficulty at all in sending its thoughts to the ends of 
the earth in the fraction of a second. 

My body loses a leg, but my soul loses nothing. 
After a period of years my corporeal frame ceases 
to grow. Not so with the soul, the mind, the growth 
of that, continues as steadily as ever. 

If judgment is to depend on the conclusion drawn 
from my own sensations, undoubtedly, the verdict 
will be, soul and body possess natures radically at 
variance. 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY 7 

Soul and body are made of different stuff, because while 
the latter appeals to the senses, the former is inaccess- 
ible to sense. 

All things composed of material substance affect us 
through our five senses. The body affects us in 
this way. We see, hear, touch, taste, or smell it. 
If the soul were made of material substance, we should 
be able, in like manner, either to see, hear, touch, 
taste, or smell it. We can do neither the one nor the 
other. Our knowledge of it comes through no avenue 
of sense, but from within. 

Between the soul and the body there is thus a fun- 
damental contrast. The chasm which yawns be- 
tween mental and physical is less easily bridged by 
the mind than any interval we know. 

Soul and body are made of different stuff for the reason 
that the soul does not possess the qualities character- 
istic of bodily substance. 

Men of science agree that the materials of which our 
bodies are formed are at bottom alike. These mater- 
ials, solids, liquids, gases, are all constructed after a 
common pattern to which has been given the name 
Molecular. This means that when solids, liquids, 
gases, are analysed, they are found to consist of minute 
clusters of atoms called molecules. 

All these molecular substances, of which our bodies 
are composed, are distinguished by two peculiarities, 
weight, and volume. They are all more or less heavy, 
and take up more or less room. Each particle of 
flesh, nerve, muscle and bone, even a particle so small 
as to be detected only by a microscope, is stamped 
with these two essential marks of bodily substance, 
weight and volume. 



8 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Now a dead body, a body from which the soul has 
departed, weighs as much as a living body. Since 
the presence or absence of the soul makes no differ- 
ence to the body's weight, evidently the soul does 
not possess the quality of weight. Nor does its 
presence or absence make any difference in the size 
of the body. Consequently the soul does not possess 
the quality of size or volume. It takes up no room, 
it occupies no space. 

Did the soul possess these attributes they would be 
likely to make themselves felt during the various 
changes through which the soul passes. 

For instance, there are times when it is empty and 
vacant of ideas; there are periods again when the 
soul expands and the mind is filled to overflowing. 
At such moments we should expect a decided decrease 
or increase in bulk and weight were the soul made of 
bodily material. As a matter of fact not the slightest 
shadow of decrease or increase is discernible. The 
orator requires no larger size of hat, nor does he 
weigh any more, when in the midst of a perfervid 
peroration than when asleep. Yet assuredly he would 
do so if the torrent of thoughts that crowd and jostle 
through his brain filled even the minutest section of 
space. The seething mass would be apt to swell and 
split his skull. Were thoughts even in the smallest 
degree subject to the influence of gravitation the 
sudden addition to the orator's weight at moments of 
rhetorical excitement would endanger the stability 
of the platform. 

Thoughts occupy no space nor can they be meas- 
ured in a balance. They do not possess, nor does the 
mind or soul, of which they are the manifestations, 
possess, either volume or weight. 

Since neither of the qualities characteristic of bodily 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY 9 

substance is found in the soul, therefore, it does not 
consist of bodily substance, but of something else. 

Soul and body are made of different stuff because the 
soul possesses special attributes not found in bodily 
substance. 

All organic material, the kind of which our bodies 
are composed, is constantly changing so that there is 
nothing permanent about it. 

Not only do changes take place in the substance of 
the brain, this substance is passing away continually 
and to such an extent that the brain of the man of 
twenty is not the same as that of the boy of twelve, 
and that of the man of thirty, is not the same as that 
of the man of twenty. By the time he reaches forty, 
his brain has been again renewed, and so on periodi- 
cally until the end. Each of us is furnished not with 
one brain lasting a life time, but with a series of 
brains. 

Yet a man of sixty, although every particle of his 
previous brain has been destroyed, is able to think 
over again the thoughts he had when he was forty or 
even when he was twenty. He has only to make a 
mental effort and the past stands up ghost-like before 
him. The brain material of thirty or forty years ago 
has long since passed away, ceased to exist. How then 
could the thoughts of this extinct brain have survived? 

The brain of the man of sixty with which he is 
supposed to think about the past, is a new one, com- 
posed of wholly new material. It is inconceivable 
that this new organ can think thoughts produced by 
another organ that ceased to exist thirty or forty 
years previously. 

Perhaps it may be said that the act of memory by the 



10 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

man of sixty is not really a thinking of old thoughts 
over again but merely the shadow or reflection of 
those old thoughts cast by the dying brain onto the 
surface of its successor, and again recast by this 
successor, and so on through the series down to the 
present. 

But in order that a dying brain should cast a 
reflection on its successor that successor must be 
already in existence, and this would imply the pres- 
ence within the skull of two brains at the same time, 
which is clearly absurd. Evidently the thinking is 
done not by the substance, not by the gray tnatter of 
the brain but by something else, something made of 
quite different elements, of elements that do not 
change as the brain changes, but possess a quality of 
permanence enabling identity to be retained through 
all changes. 

It is equally evident that the something else pos- 
sessing the quality of permanent identity, which the 
bodily substance of the brain does not possess, is 
what is meant when we speak of the soul. By reason 
of this extraordinary attribute of retained identity, 
the soul is able to think over again now, the thoughts 
which it thought in the far past of its youth. 

It recognizes between itself thinking now, and it- 
self thinking in the years gone by, a real connection. 

In this there is no self deception. The matter is 
not left for us to settle. We cannot help being sure 
that the thinker thinking now, is the same thinker 
who thought in the long vanished days. 

When right and wrong are in question, I may 
desire, perhaps passionately desire, to avoid the 
recognition, but it cannot be avoided. I know in 
my heart of hearts that the connection is real, and 
that although my head is hoary and my back bent 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY 11 

with the burden of years, I am essentially the same 
person as the guilty or innocent individual of thirty 
years ago. 

The soul has other qualities not possessed by bodily 
substance, but this one attribute of permanent 
identity, alone suffices to demonstrate that however 
closely associated, the materials of which soul and 
body are respectively composed are of distinct and 
widely divergent kinds. 

Because the soul is inaccessible to sense, because 
it is destitute of the characteristic qualities of material 
substance, because it possesses other attributes not 
possessed by material substance, therefore, soul and 
body belong to different orders. 

Thus, whatever their relationship be, it cannot be 
a relationship of cause and effect. The one is not a 
product of the other. 

From time to time various writers have insisted 
that mind is a secretion of the brain in the sense for 
instance, that milk is a secretion of the lacteal glands 
of the cow, or tears of the lachrymal glands of the 
eye. 
To this motion there are two fatal objections. 

1. A secretion is a product of that by which it is 
secreted. Milk and tears are products respectively, of 
the lacteal and lachrymal glands, and being products, 
milk and tears are composed essentially of the same 
materials as the glands by which they are produced. 
But it has been shown that mind, thought, soul, is 
not a product of brain substance, and is not made of 
the same material, consequently, it cannot be a secre- 
tion of brain substance. 

2. Mind cannot be a secretion of brain substance as 
tears are a secretion of the substance of the lachrymal 
glands, because the brain is not a gland. It does not 



12 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

even resemble a gland. Cerebral tissue is not in the 
least like glandular tissue. The brain is no more a 
gland, than is a hand or foot, and never secretes 
anything. 

There are some, however, who still cling to the 
opposite theory, and maintain that the soul must be 
produced by the body. The reason generally given is, 
that thought is a function of the brain substance, just 
as steam is a function of the boiling tea kettle, or 
light of the electric circuit, or power of the moving 
water fall. This functional relationship, it is argued, 
is causal, and implies production. 

Our answer is, that the exercise of function is not 
necessarily causal. In the physical world, says 
William James, we have also permissive or releasing, 
and we have transmissive function. 

The keys of an organ have transmissive function. 
They open successively the various pipes, and let the 
wind in the air chest escape in various ways. The 
voices of the pipes are constituted by the columns of 
air trembling as they emerge. But the air is not 
engendered in, or produced by, the organ. When 
therefore, we say thought is a function of brain sub- 
stance, it does not follow that the brain substance 
produced the thought, the connection may have 
been one of transmitting, or releasing. The functional 
relation may be like that of the lens and the light as 
suggested by Huxley. [Life and Letters, vol. 2. p t 299. \ 

He writes " Consider a parallel sided piece of glass 
through which light passes. It forms no picture. 
Shape it so as to be bi-convex and a picture appears 
in its focus. Is not the formation of this picture a 
function of the piece of glass so shaped? Neverthe- 
less the piece of glass produces neither the picture nor 
the picture making power. These reside in the light. 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY 13 

All the lens does is to modify the action of the light 
and so to cause its powers to be apparent to our 
senses. " 

Suppose soul and brain are related roughly speaking 
as the light to the lens. If it be that only through the 
brain lens the soul can throw thought pictures onto the 
receiving network of the nervous system, and so cause 
the muscles to move and things to be done and said, 
then the thoughts of the soul would appear to be 
functions of the brain lens. Still the thoughts would 
not be produced by the brain lens any more than the 
light was produced by the lens of glass. 

In some such way as this, the closest association 
might exist between thought and brain substance, 
without the one being the product of the other. A 
writer in the Contemporary Review [F.R.C.S.] states 
the position thus. 

"To watch day by day a case of profound uncon- 
sciousness, the body a mere log fed through a tube, a 
physiological machine, a thing with no more thought 
in it than a dummy figure, and to see men and women 
brought to a like state in a few minutes by chloroform 
or ether, and kept there just as part of a day's work, 
and to see the process reversed, and the lost owner 
of a body spirited back into it by an operation to his 
brain, here are the arguments ready-made for mater- 
ialism to use with effect. " 

Impressive as such cases are, they do not prove that 
the mind or soul is a product of the body. The 
phenomena may be explained equally well by a differ- 
ent theory. 

Theory number one, assumes that consciousness is 
related to the body much as the flame is related to the 
wick and oil of the lamp. An anesthetic turns down the 
wick and so extinguishes the flame. 



14 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Theory number two, supposes that consciousness is 
related to the body roughly speaking as the lamp to 
the room which it illuminates. Consciousness the 
lamp, the body the room. According to this second 
theory, what the anesthetic does, is not to turn down 
the wick and so extinguish the flame, but to lower an 
opaque shade over the lamp and so extinguish its 
illuminating power as regards the room. 

On both theories darkness is produced, the darkness 
of unconsciousness, but according to the first, the 
result is achieved by destroying consciousness, (ex- 
tinguishing the flame). According to the second by 
cutting off the connection of consciousness with its 
bodily surroundings, (by interposing an opaque barrier 
between the lamp and the room) . 

Is there any evidence to show which of these two 
theories is the more nearly correct? 

There is evidence at any rate to show that the first 
is not correct. If the effect of the anesthetic were to 
extinguish the flame, to destroy consciousness, then 
when consciousness is restored, on the withdrawal of 
the anesthetic, it would involve the creation of a new 
consciousness. Whereas in actual fact, what is restored 
is a consciousness recognizing its responsibility for 
obligations, (the doctor's fee, for instance,) incurred 
previous to the administration of the anesthetic. Con- 
sequently it is the same old consciousnessrthat illum- 
inated its tenement of clay before the opaque shade of 
anesthesia was dropped over it. 

The deathlike condition of the physical frame did 
not mean the extinction of consciousness, as would be 
the case were consciousness a product of the brain sub- 
stance, as the flame of the wick and oil, but that con- 
nection with its environment was cut off temporarily. 
Probably then, the function of the gray matter of the 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY 15 

brain is of the transmitting order. It is certainly not 
productive, and implies no causal connection between 
brain and mind. 

If their connection is not causal, what is the 
relationship? Soul and body are very closely associa- 
ted. The state of the body affects more or less the 
state of the soul, or at least the conditions of its 
intercourse with the material world. A state of 
bodily health promotes mental activity, a congested 
liver, mental torpor. The pressure of a splinter of 
bone may result in idiocy. There are records of 
persons who, while retaining their mental faculties 
to the full, were unable to communicate by sign or 
sound with those about them, because, in conse- 
quence of some sudden shock, their nervous system 
had been paralyzed. Conversely, the state of the 
soul affects the state of the body. Cheerful thoughts 
promote digestion, joyful anticipation quickens the 
pulse, anxiety depresses the nervous system, fear 
may produce death. 

In such ways do soul and body act and react on one 
another. So far as this earthly career is concerned, 
the welfare of the one depends on the welfare of the 
other. , Intimate and profound as their mutual influ- 
ence is, m&y it not be adequately explained on the 
assumption of a working partnership? Are not the 
facts accounted for on the hypothesis of cooperation? 

Were this the relationship, we should expect that 
to happen which does happen. With the physical 
machinery thrown out of order by injury or disease, 
it would become difficult for the soul to exercise 
control. Under these circumstances the familiar 
phenomena of disease, weakness, peribds of uncon- 
sciousness, delirium, or the eccentricities of insanity, 
would be the natural results. 



16 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Not even a Paderewski can get music from a piano 
that is out of tune, so not even the most vigorous 
soul can get normal action from a diseased brain or 
body. 

The operator may be there fully alive, but if the 
wires are down no message can be sent. 

On the other hand, if soul and body be in coopera- 
tive association it is conceivable that the body may 
be carried triumphantly through the strain and stress 
of trying vicissitudes by the supporting energy of the 
soul, and that by this same soul energy, minor physical 
injuries and defects may be healed and overcome. 

The question is often asked, in what part of the 
physical frame does the soul reside? There is no 
answer. It can be said only that when certain 
portions of the physical frame are destroyed, the 
brain for instance, the connection comes to an end. 
The tenant is turned out of doors. 

Of the relations between the inward self or soul 
and the outward or bodily self, we learn then, that 
they are not those of product and producer, but of 
partner and partner. 

Finally it may be added, the soul is the senior 
member of the firm, the more important element in 
us, the thing that counts and makes us what we are. 



CHAPTER III 

The Soul and the World 

Within is the soul, without, is the world. Just as 
it is impossible to think of left apart from right, or 
right apart from left, so is it impossible to think of 
the soul apart from the world, or the world apart 
from the soul. The two are inseparable. Com- 
munication between them is carried on through sight, 
sound, touch, taste, smell. These sensations are, as 
it were, the fingers of the world playing upon the 
strings of the soul, and bringing therefrom chords 
and melodies. The world is the teacher of the soul. 

About what it sees, hears, touches, tastes, smells, 
the soul thinks, reflects, reasons, compares, judges, 
and thus learns in a twofold way, by the world's 
action, and by its own action. In these two ways the 
soul acquires knowledge of the world without, and 
knowledge also concerning itself, its own capacities 
and powers. 

One of the chief lessons learned about the world 
is that all things therein, are related. 

Step by step, the knowledge is gathered, that 
even where to the ordinary observer there seems 
absolutely nothing in common, more careful examina- 
tion shows always that relationships exist. 

At first glance no one would suspect any connection 
between a thrush and a sprig of mistletoe, a song bird 
palpitating with energetic life, and a dull vegetable 
growth with scarcely a life of its own at all. In out- 

17 



18 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

ward appearance very different, there is between 
these two nevertheless an intimate relationship. 
' To secure the survival of the mistletoe its seeds 
must be planted in the bark of trees. The seeds are 
enclosed in berries which ripen in midwinter. At 
this season when the trees around are bare, the 
mistletoe is bright and fresh and can be seen through 
the leafless forest from a long way off. Now the 
berries, the presence of which is signalled so con- 
spicuously, are especially suited to the taste of 
thrushes and by them are sought after witfy avidity. 
Having eaten the delicious pulp the bird finds the 
seeds adhering to its bill, for they are coated with a 
sticky gum. To get rid of the nuisance he rubs his 
bill against the bark and thus becomes the instrument 
by which the seeds are planted in the kind of soil, 
exactly suited to their needs.- 

[W. Marshall Pop. Sc. Rev. March 1887]. 

In a similar way all living creatures are linked 
together. The several hundred thousand species are 
grouped into two families, one with backbones and 
the other without, while countless intermediate forms 
link vertebrate with invertebrate, the elephant with 
the oyster, man with the amaeba. 

Among vegetable products, unbroken lines of con- 
nection can be established between objects outwardly 
as different as the blue mold on an old boot, and the 
giant redwood trees of California, or the rose outside 
your window, and the microscopic seaweed flourish- 
ing miles deep in mid Atlantic. 

Nor does any gulf divide plants from animals. 
"Theyare identical in internal structure and in the 
discharge of the mysterious processes of reproduction 
and nutrition." 



THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 19 

In the mineral kingdom solids, liquids, gases, unlike 
as they are in appearance and in quality, are all 
made out of the same atomic material. 

Furthermore the living is related to the non-living. 
Animal, vegetable, mineral, dovetail into one another 
as it were. They are but different forms of the same 
substance, variations of the same theme. 

What is true of animal, plant, and mineral, is true 
also of the forces of nature. They seem erratic and 
independent, in reality they work together. The 
expansive power of steam, the shock of electricity, the 
explosion of gunpowder, these, in the words of Pro- 
fessor Atwater, "can be shown to be merely different 
forms of the same energy which vibrates in the notes 
of a song, or expands in the growth of flowers, and is 
in the cyclone which devastates the land, as in the 
cooling zephyr of a summer's evening, in the awful 
rolling of the thunder, and in the lightning's flash, as 
in the rustle of the leaves, and the gentle cooing of 
the doves, in the tramping of armed hosts, the roar 
of artillery, and the carnage of battle, as in the soft 
caress and tender lullaby with which the mother 
sings and soothes her babe to sleep." 

The life that pulsates in the African savage, in the 
brain of a Plato, in the muscles of a prize fighter, in 
the worm slowly crawling across the garden path, 
and the eagle swooping to his prey, in the bee hum- 
ming from flower to flower, in the microbe, and in 
the bird of paradise, is a manifestation and expression 
of the same life. 

It would seem that all things and all souls are en- 
meshed in a network of relationships. 

Scientific research confirms this idea. Men of 
science explore the realm of nature in many different 
ways. Darwin patiently records tens of thousands of 



20 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

subtle changes in insect, bird and beast. Pasteur 
spends half a life time in studying millions of minute 
vegetable and animal forms. Edison probes labor- 
iously the properties of electricity and light. These 
men investigated various departments of nature, and 
they carried on their investigations for many years, 
and over vast areas, but they never reached a border 
line at which the relationship of things came to an 
end. 

"Astronomers are able to predict eclipses, to 
calculate to within twenty -four hours the return of 
a comet, to measure the rate at which distant planets 
far beyond the margin of our solar system are revolv- 
ing round their suns, because precisely the same laws 
prevail in the remotest spaces of the starry heavens, 
as exist here on earth.' ' 

Nothing is isolated and. apart. Everything is 
connected with everything else. Relationship is uni- 
versal. 

Professor G. Stanley Hall tells of a student whose 
teacher set him to study experimentally one of the 
seventeen muscles of a frog's leg. At first he was 
disposed to resent having such an insignificant sub- 
ject assigned to him, but as he progressed, he found 
that in order to understand this one tiny tendon he 
must understand in a more minute and practical way 
than before, in a way that made previous knowledge 
unreal, questions in electricity, chemistry, mechanics, 
physiology, questions of complex relation in every 
direction. As the winter proceeded the history of 
previous views was traced and still other and broader 
biological relations were perceived, and as the sum- 
mer waned and a second year was begun in the study 
of this single muscle, it was seen that the laws of life 
are the same in frogs and men, and that contractile 



THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 21 

tissue of the same kind had done all that man had 
accomplished in the world, and that muscles are the 
only organs of the will. As the work went on, it 
seemed as though the great mysteries of the universe 
were centred round the student's theme. 

In the investigation of this minute object he passed 
gradually from the attitude of Peter Bell, up to 
the standpoint of the Seer who plucked a flower from 
the crannied wall, and realised that could he but 
understand what it was, "root and all and all in 
all," he would "know what God and man is." 

"All things by immortal power 
Near or far 
Hiddenly 
To each other linked are, 
And thou canst not stir a flower 
Without troubling a star." 

When we ask what this universal relationship 
means, the answer is, it means organization. It 
signifies that instead of being a chaos of contending 
powers, the universe is a kosmos of co-operating 
powers, part working with part, force with force, as 
a connected whole, fitted and framed together, all of 
a piece, an organization. 

Like a fly in the spider's web, like a child wandering 
in the streets of London, like a small star encircled 
by the measureless labyrinths of the milky way, the 
soul is encircled by the vast and strong organization 
of the universe. There is no escape. 

"We in some unknown power's employ 
Move in a rigorous line 
We cannot when we will enjoy, 
Nor when we will decline." 



22 THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 

It is the part of wisdom therefore, for the soul to 
endeavor to learn what it can of the nature of this 
encompassing universe, that it may know what its 
own fate is likely to be, and what it ought to do under 
the circumstances. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Power Behind the Soul and the World 

Behind all things is one thing, and that one thing is a 
power of life. 

Where then, shall we find the key to the inter- 
pretation of the world problem? As we have seen, 
the outstanding fact is organization. How was the 
organizing done? Did the universe organize itself? 

Since the universe is an organization, it consists, as 
all organizations consist, of parts, few or many, great 
or small, When we speak of the universe as organiz- 
ing itself, we say, in effect, that the operation was 
performed by these component parts, by one or more, 
or by all of them together. The peculiar nature of 
an organization makes such an idea irrational. 

On the beach is a heap of stones washed up by the 
sea. Men arrive, cart them away, and they are built 
into a house. So long as they lay upon the beach, 
they were just stones. Now, they are constituents of 
a structure. Now, they are associated for the pro- 
duction of a definite result. Together with all the 
other constituents they have now been made to con- 
tribute to the existence of a house. They have thus 
become subordinate to a power working toward an 
end or purpose beyond themselves, the power, namely, 
of the builder's will, working toward the end or pur- 
pose of an organization called a house. The builder's 
will, to which, as parts of the house organization they 
are now subordinate, is something other than, and 

23 



24 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

different from, themselves, and it is to this something 
other than and different from themselves, that the 
organization is due. Consequently, the stones have 
ceased to be mere stones and have become constitu- 
ent parts of an organization, through subjection to an 
organizing influence other than, and different from, 
themselves. 

This will be found true in every case. The parts of 
which an organization is composed, are where they are, 
and fulfill their respective functions, by reason of 
being subject to an organizing influence, other than, 
and different from, any of the parts it influences. 

Since its existence is due to an influence other 
than, and different from, any of its parts, an organiza- 
tion cannot be self organized. 

The same argument may be stated in different 
words, as follows: 

An organization cannot be organized by its own 
parts, because, the part is conditional to the organiza- 
tion. That which is conditional, follows that which 
conditions. Therefore, the part, (that which is con- 
ditional), cannot be the origin of the organization, 
(that which conditions), for that which is subsequent, 
cannot be the origin of that which is antecedent. 
Again, suppose we have the three parts of an egg, 
yolk, white, shell, entirely separate, lying, let us 
imagine, on three separate tables. The yolk possesses 
the qualities of yolk, the white, the qualities of white, 
the shell, the qualities of shell. 

Now, if we add these three qualities together, we 
shall get, yolk, + white, +shell, but we shall not get 
anything else. If we want anything else, we must 
add other qualities. If we want an egg, for instance, 
we must add to the qualities belonging to yolk, and 
white, and shell, the qualities belonging to an egg. 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 25 

Since yolk, and white and shell, possess only the 
qualities of yolk, and white, and shell, this egg 
quality, which is to unite them into the organic whole- 
ness of an egg, must be sought elsewhere. An addi- 
tional agency must be brought into play, that, 
namely, of the laying hen. 

It is the same in all cases. The influence which 
brings the several parts into organic relations, must 
have its sources elsewhere than in the several parts. 
In other words, an organization cannot, by its very 
nature, organize itself. 

Are not exceptions to be found in human institu- 
tions such as clubs, baseball teams, etc.? Do we not 
often speak of these as organizing themselves? 

The exception is apparent only. Before either club 
or baseball team can come into existence, the idea of 
them must arise in the mind of some organizer, and 
although that individual may subsequently join the 
association he has devised, he must devise it first, 
and plan out its general scheme, before it can have 
its birth, or he himself be counted among its members. 

To the plain man it is self evident that a similar 
explanation is required for the world organization. 
There must be an organizing influence having its 
source elsewhere than in the parts of the world which 
it welds together and brings into organic relationship. 

Behind and beyond the universal organization 
there must be a universal organizer. 

Was the universe organized by chance? 

Did a flurry of minute particles by accident get 
jostled into such relations as to bring forth a world? 
The universe could not have been produced in any 
such vague, haphazard way. 



V 



26 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Organization implies a look ahead, in the case of 
the universe, a very long look ahead. The whole 
' existing order of things must have been foreseen from 
the first. 

The chief requisite for enterprise of this kind is 
that you should have clearly in mind what you in- 
tend to do. If it be your aim to lay out a garden, or 
to build a house, or to arrange a public meeting, 
success will depend on the extent to which you have 
worked out your ideas beforehand, on the clearness 
of your forethought, and on the thoroughness with 
which you subordinate every detail to the main 
object in view. 

If this applies to the comparatively simple achieve- 
ments of the human intellect, how much more to the 
inconceivably vast and complex universe! Whatever 
may have been the particular method by which the 
universe was brought forth, most certainly it was 
not brought forth by chance. 

Is evolution the organizer? 

Evolution is merely a descriptive term. When we 
say the various species of animals and vegetables 
have been produced by evolution, we meaivthey have 
been produced by certain natural processes operating 
according to evolutionary principles. These natural 
processes do the business. The term evolution simply 
describes, and so far as it goes truly describes, the 
general manner in which they work. It affirms that 
they brought forth the world organization by acting 
along developmental lines. Not evolution, then, but 
that which was behind evolution, accomplished the 
organizing. 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 27 

The universe has been organized by some kind of power. 

Thorough analysis of any object brings us at last 
always to two primal constituents, matter and 
motion. The objects may vary but the result to which 
the examination leads never varies. In the end, we 
arrive always at matter and motion. May we not 
say, then, that here in matter and motion we have the 
final organizing influences of the universe? 

No, for these things are not final. They are them- 
selves subject to organization. 

This must be the case, for out of them has sprung 
the universe, had they been left to themselves they 
could not have given birth to a universe. Had motion 
and matter been left to themselves, the whole of 
matter would have moved toward a common centre 
of gravity round which it would have congealed in a 
uniform spherical mass. 

Instead, matter has been drawn into millions of 
different centres of gravity, from the combinations 
and recombinations of which, the universe has been 
constructed. 

Something, therefore, it is evident, must have 
directed motion and arranged matter. This some- 
thing, it is equally evident, must have been some kind 
of "power. 

The ultimate organizing power is ONE and not many. 

The laws of thought themselves oblige us to assume 
a single power. It is the ultimate idea, u the deepest, 
widest, most certain of all facts. " Were there several 
powers behind the primal motion and matter, they 
would be either independent, or interdependent. If 
the former, the activities of each would be wholly 
unaffected by the activities of the rest, with the result 



28 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

of a number of universes absolutely unrelated. In 
which case, as we should never be able to learn of 
their existence, they would be, so far as we were con- 
cerned, non-existent. We should be left in our own 
universe with a single independent power as its source. 

If, on the other hand, the several powers behind the 
frame of things were interdependent, that is depend- 
ing on one another, one and all of them would be parts 
of a common organization, and as a consequence, 
subject to the control of the organization. The ulti- 
mate source, therefore, would be not in the several 
forces, but in the organization to which they belonged. 
Instead of a number of powers we are thus led back 
to a single power. 

Behind all things is one thing, and that one thing 
is a power. 

Out of this issue two consequences. 

1. Since all things are controlled by a single power, 
there is nothing beyond its control, either in space, 
or time, and that beyond which there is nothing in 
space or time, is both infinite and eternal. 

2. Since all things in space and time are controlled 
by this power, the beginnings of all things are under 
its control. It is therefore, not only the ruler, but the 
source, the creator, the cause, of all things. 

By a single infinite and eternal energy or power, 
the universe has been created, and is controlled. 

This creator and controller of all things, is a power of 
LIFE. 

Many have held that the world force is machine 
force, that the universe is a vast engine, a complicated 
piece of mechanism, running automatically. 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 29 

By a machine, we mean "a number of individual 
particles associated together in producing some 
definite result." 

In order to do its work, to produce its definite 
result, the machine must move, and no matter what the 
motive power applied, whether steam, water, wind, 
electricity, or a man's hand or foot, the motions 
resulting are always either rotary, vibratory, rectil-*' 
inear, or a combination of these. Such movements 
are taking place at every instant, in every part of 
the known world, and so far they mark the world as a 
machine. There is, however, something more in the 
world than mechanical movements of repetition. 
Everywhere there is development, evolution, growth. 
Combine all forms of mechanical motion, rotary, vibra- 
tory, rectilinear, as intimately and as skilfully as you 
may, still you will not get growth out of them. Yet 
growth pervades the universe, and as it is a movement 
neither produced, nor producible by, any known 
mechanical law, it indicates that the universe is 
something more than a piece of mechanism. 

Growth is a sign of life. Things that grow are liv- 
ing things. The universe contains living things, vast 
numbers of living things, from which it would seem 
to follow that the universe producing power must be 
itself alive, for it is inconceivable that a power not 
itself alive, could produce a universe teeming with life. 

Furthermore, there is in the universe not life merely, 
but conscious, intelligent life. Consequently the life of 
the universe producing power must be conscious and 
intelligent. 

At the back of everything is one thing, and that 
one thing is a power of conscious intelligent life. 

This is the primal truth the soul discovers about 
the universe in which it dwells. 



30 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Goodness Rules. 

The infinite and eternal power of conscious intelli- 
gent life is a power of goodness. Goodness rules. 

First. Because there is more good than evil in the 
world. 

Observation discloses that in the mingled mass of 
the world's good and ill, there is a predominance of 
good. 

A study of the newspapers might lead to the oppo- 
site conclusion. The exigencies of modern journalism 
require that the story of a crime should be" displayed," 
while a deed of kindness is relegated to an obscure 
paragraph. Pessimism is fashionable, and the pessi- 
mist has been described as one who, having a choice of 
two evils, takes both. Distinguished authors support 
this attitude. The world of a Hardy, or a Wells, is a 
place in which righteousness occupies a back seat. 

Undoubtedly they have ground for gloom. A stag- 
gering amount of misery meets the eye in every direc- 
tion. The total of evil bulks large, still, an impartial 
survey of the actual state of things will convince us, 
that the total of good bulks larger. 

We must bear in mind, that appearances to the 
contrary notwithstanding, there is no such thing as 
unmixed evil. 

Black though the following examples be, their 
blackness is not wholly unrelieved. 

" An ignorant mother puts her baby into a cooling 
cookstove to keep the infant warm while she leaves 
the house. The father comes home unacquainted 
with the circumstances, lights the fire, and roasts the 
child. 

"A fireman, heroic to save life, is trapped at the top 
of a burning building, the roof hydrant of which he 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 31 

has climbed to open, seeks escape by the nearest 
electric cable, and is dashed eight stories to the 
frozen ground. 

"A healthy, happy, young creature on a gala day 
takes the train that is foredoomed to collision, and 
for thirty, forty, fifty years, an invalid upon a mat- 
trass grave, lies staring at the walls of a coffin room 
and mutters, 'Why?' 

"A motherless girl, too young for the knowledge of 
the tree of good and evil, errs for love, and her 
broken life sinks into a nameless, unforgiven, irre- 
claimable shame, which finds no respite till it finds 
the grave. 

"A child born without eyesight, speech, or hearing, 
lives to be a very old person and patiently passes 
out of existence." [North Am. Rev. May, 1893.] 

While evils such as these are among the realities 
of life, they are not the only realities. 

Death by suffocation in the cookstove was not the 
only incident in the baby's short career. Contact with 
warm surfaces, the absorption of nourishment, the 
free movements of legs and arms, had thrilled the 
tiny frame countless times with sensations of content. 

Nor were the mental anguish they endured, and 
the sickening manner of their loss, the only experiences 
of the mother and father. What they had lost, they 
had previously possessed, and they had known the 
satisfaction of possession. Unnumbered hours of 
happiness had been spent together in watching over 
and caring for their offspring. Every evening as the 
father drew near his cottage, a sense of pleasure came 
over him, and more pleasure awaited him on arrival. 
How much complacency he had felt in being master of 
a house, in slowly accumulating the fittings and the 
furniture, and what a triumph was his when finally he 



32 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

brought home the pretty girl who had become his 
wife! 

During the half hour preceding his death, the fire- 
man was experiencing probably, one of the keenest 
joys possible to human nature, the successful, vic- 
torious, exercise of physical and mental faculties, the 
exhilaration of being first in his place as the fire 
wagon tore out of the station and down the street, 
the excitement of anticipation, the exaltation of the 
hero who faces danger and realizes that he is con- 
quering, subduing, overcoming, all before him. At 
such moments the breath of heaven is on his brow. 

At each instant of her existence up to the time of 
the collision, the "healthy, happy, young creature' ' 
was enjoying health, happiness, and youth. Even in 
the long subsequent years no day passed without 
some gleam of sunshine. A- welcome visitor, a sym- 
pathetic friend, a fragrant cup of tea, a new and 
fascinating story, the lighting of the lamps, and 
blessed intervals when pain was stilled. 

All the after sufferings of the motherless girl grew 
out of an ecstasy, out of an excess of unregulated joy, 
and among the bitter after-sufferings there were the 
delights of adornment, and of dress, devoted friend- 
ships with others as unfortunate as herself, friend- 
ships which lasted till the end, mutual charities, the 
pleasures of a good meal, and later on, the solace of 
drink. Even in the hospital, in the final weeks of 
gathering feebleness, there was the sense of being 
the centre of attention, and the comfort of long 
unaccustomed cleanliness, renewed. 

To the child born blind, and deaf, and dumb, mere 
existence means not only blindness, deafness, and the 
inability to speak, but also the daily repeated satis- 
faction of assimilation, of digestion, and of appetite 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 33 

appeased. Pleasure came as well, from the harmoni- 
ous sensation of things soft and smooth, the con- 
sciousness of perfume and of taste. Never having 
known sight, or hearing, it is difficult to understand 
how they could be missed, or how the want of them 
could be felt as an evil. That when age came, he 
passed patiently away, is evidence of experiences 
which at least made life endurable. 

Here then is a second class of actualities, and this 
class has one quality in common. All these things, 
namely appetite appeased, freedom, content, affec- 
tion, pride in achievement, exultation, successful 
activity, health, youth, friendship, delightful tastes 
and smells, are good. 

Furthermore, not only is all evil mingled with good, 
but in certain circumstances the evil appears greater 
than it is. While all is not gold that glitters, neither 
is all that looks like suffering wholly painful. 

C. A. Benson tells of a man who in his mature 
years lost his sight. To outward seeming his state 
was one of unrelieved misery, yet a closer acquaint- 
ance disclosed an existence of extraordinary richness, 
and undreamed of joy. 

Most people can multiply such instances out of 
their own experiences. 

One would think there would be little to mitigate 
the situation in which a man finds himself when in 
the power of a fierce and savage animal. Yet such 
evidence as we possess indicates that the situation 
is not quite so bad as it looks. 

"It is curious," writes Lord Playfair [Memoirs 
p. 374] "that there are two people here, the Turkish 
Ambassador Rustem Pasha, and Sir Edward Brad- 
ford, who have been maimed by wild beasts. The 
latter had the whole of his left arm up to the elbow 



34 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

joint munched by a tiger, and the Turkish Ambassa- 
dor has half the right hand and part of his left, torn 
away by a bear. Both tell me that they felt no pain 
during the mutilation, and they suppose that their 
intense desire to defend themselves prevented them 
from feeling pain. Livingstone, the African traveller, 
told me the same thing, that when his arm was 
munched by a lion he could not recollect suffering 
any pain. ,, 

What in appearance could be more agonizing and 
utterly miserable, than the situation of a wounded 
soldier left without medical aid on the battle field? 
Lieut. Sakurai of the Japanese army, had his right 
leg broken and both arms shot through, at one of the 
assaults on Fort Arthur, and remained on the sun 
scorched slopes for two days and nights. Yet so long 
as he continued under nature's kindly care he suffered 
little. The pain began, he writes, only when human 
methods were brought to bear. 

" I did not feel any pain at all during the two days 
I was lying on the field, but oh! the pain I began to 
feel when I was taken to first aid, and bandaged, the 
agony I then felt was so great that I wished I had 
died on the field/ ' 

Mrs. Oliphant thus describes the Putney hospital 
for incurables. 

"Someone has called this place the palace of pain. 
I do not doubt the truth of the title. Yet I have 
gone through the greater part of these rooms filled 
with indescribable aches and sufferings, that are with- 
out hope in this world, and I have found nothing but 
a patient quietness, a great tranquility, a peace, that 
fills the careless spectator coming in out of the fresh 
air, out of the sunshiny world where everything is 
rejoicing in life and strength and the radiance of the 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 35 

morning, with awe and respectful reverence. Some 
of these poor people are never free from pain, some are 
subject to periodic paroxysms of anguish, one scarce 
over before another begins, many are helpless and 
cannot move at all even by the nurse's aid, and yet 
there is peace breathing all around us, a composed 
and mild endurance often accompanied with smiles, 
scarcely ever with a countenance of gloom. An 
atmosphere of cheerfulness fills like sunshine the 
quiet chambers. What struggles there may be in 
lonely hearts and tortured bodies, it is not ours to 
enquire. Such struggles there must be, or the suf- 
ferers would be more than human. But we can see 
only patience and peace. This is more wonderful 
than the pain and far less comprehensible. Our 
hearts cry out for them as we pass from one bed of 
anguish ,to another, but from these beds there rise 
no cries. 

All is tranquility, patience, a great quietness. The 
palace of pain is also the House of Peace.' ' 

See the accounts of the Messina earthquake, by 
Professor Lombroso and Mr. Robert Hichins (too 
long for quotation here). They relate instance after 
instance in which, although the outward circumstance 
indicated terrible agonies, no agonies were felt. 

Let any one inclined to the view that misery out- 
balances happiness, read the letters of R. L. Stevenson, 
himself a life long invalid; especially vol. 1, pp. 437- 
442. 

The foregoing considerations bring home to us, that 
in attempting to arrive at a just estimate of their 
relative proportions, we should bear in mind, that 
while it may be possible to exaggerate the amount 
of good in any situation, it is also possible to exag- 
gerate the amount of evil. Moreover, a considerable 



36 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

amount of the pain we encounter makes for our wel- 
fare. 

a. The agonies of the operating theater, the hos- 
pital, and the dental chair, excruciating as these in 
themselves may be, tend to conditions of comfort 
and freedom from pain. 

b. Various forms of suffering lead to a strengthen- 
ing of character. 

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil 
Would men observingly distil it out." 

On many occasions men do distil it out. Poets learn 
in suffering what they teach in song. Not until the 
death of Arthur Hallam had wrought upon the mind 
and heart of Tennyson, was "In Memoriam" pro- 
duced. Hawthorne's genius .grew in narrow and sor- 
rowful surroundings, we must believe in large measure 
because of those surroundings, and brought forth some 
of the most delicate and original literary work yet 
produced on this side of the Atlantic. Had Thackeray 
not lost his fortune, he might never have been more 
than an amateur art critic. Josiah Wedgewood's leg is 
amputated, and he can no longer stand at the potter's 
wheel. The enforced leisure liberates his mind, and 
he invents the Wedge wood ware. Speaking of his 
hard life as a tutor in Richmond, Channing said, 
"I look back on those days of loneliness and frequent 
gloom, with thankfulness." Is it not sorrow that! 
gives us our capacity for laughter? 

"Alas by some degree of woe 
We every bliss must gain, 
The heart can ne'er a transport know 
That never felt a pain." 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 37 

c. We benefit by all sacrificial suffering. Not be- 
cause pain is itself good, but because only through 
pain can the highest happiness be reached. James 
Hilton affirms that to make the most excruciating 
tortures tolerable, it is only necessary that the sufferer 
should be convinced that he suffers for a worthy end. 
\^ "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." 

A child dies of diphtheria. Who notices the obscure 
and common ending of his life? A Dr. Rabbeth dies 
of the same disease, as a result of attempting to save 
the child by sucking the poison from the patient's 
throat, and we place a tablet to his memory. 

"It should be the aim of social advance to reduce 
as much as possible, all pain that is not sacrifice, in 
order that sacrificial pain may shine forth as the 
crowning glory to which character can attain.' ' 

To sum up. In no case is evil unmixed. In cer- 
tain cases it appears greater than it actually is. A 
good deal of pain, if not itself beneficial, leads to 
benefit. Finally, it is only through suffering, the 
suffering of sacrifice, that human nature can reach 
the highest levels of its possible development. 

In judging the situation ought we not to take these 
considerations into account? If we do take them 
into account, though a formidable volume of evil 
remains, is there real ground for thinking it can be 
as large, or anything like as large, as the total amount 
of good? That good outweighs evil, is indicated 
further, by the continued existence of societies of 
human beings. 

Society implies the rule of morality. The mortar 
which holds the social edifice together is composed 
of the ten commandments. Even primitive society, 
even the tribes of central Africa, hold together only in 



38 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

so far as they compel a reasonable observance of these 
principles. 

' As almost the entire surface of the globe is occupied 
by people who are organized into social communities, 
resting on a basis of social morality, it seems clear 
that however large the amount of depravity in these 
communities, goodness preponderates. 

The vast majority of those with whom we come in 
contact are respectable people. While their virtue 
may not be of a shining quality, it outweighs their 
vice sufficiently to give them the stamp of decent 
folk, and among this predominating mass of mediocre 
goodness, there are more saints and heroes than is 
sometimes imagined. 

The fireman, ready to dash into the flames. The 
policeman, courting danger and death in his daily 
round of duty. The life-boat sailors, who face 
appalling storms. The locomotive engineer, who with 
steady nerve and lion heart, stays with a sure hand 
the destruction which threatens his human freight. 
The trained nurse, who runs a thousand risks. The 
physician, who goes with equanimity where deadly 
diseases lurk. In the slums, a host of consecrated 
workers spend unnoticed lives among the miserable 
and the poor. In countless obscure homes there are 
women whose quiet existence is a blessing to all 
around them, and men untrumpeted by fame who are 
models of courage and chivalrous devotion. 

The predominance of good is corroborated by the 
fact that most of us regard life as our supreme pos- 
session. Whatever the exceptional man may do, 
the average man enjoys himself to an extent that 
causes him to set a high value on existence. Many 
of us are handicapped with disabilities, mental, 
bodily, material, nevertheless we are not willing to 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 39 

give up the ghost. We are not longing for the end to 
come. We take many precautions to stave off the 
end. We try to hide the appearance of age, we dread 
to see the first gray hairs. 

If life be good to the average man; if, that is, the 
average life be good, it can only be because there is 
a preponderance of good in life as a whole. 

Although the preponderance of good be true of 
the human race, does not the ceaseless struggle for 
existence forbid the idea of its being true of the 
animal world? 

The marks of nature's cruelty and treachery are 
plain on every hand, she is "red in tooth and claw," 
we are told. "Every robin chirping on the holly", 
writes Frances Power Cobbe, "has been a parricide, 
every cuckoo filling the April woods with soft sound, 
has been a fratricide." 

"What terrible and prolonged agony, what tortur- 
ing suspense," exclaims Huxley, "must the deer 
suffer pursued by the wolf. He feels the enemy is 
gaining on him with every step, that a fearful death is 
slowly but surely drawing near." 

"Few sights are more calculated to stir the sympa- 
thetic breast than the writhings of the cloven worm. 
If any creature, lacking a voice, yet proclaimed to 
heaven its agony, this is it." 

In order to subserve some remote advantage to the 
race, nature sacrifices ruthlessly millions of lives. 

All this sounds tragical enough, but on what does 
it rest? The sole ground for assuming that animals 
suffer in the way described, is that their feelings are the 
same as ours. For such an assumption there is not 
the slightest evidence. To speak of robins and cuckoos 
as parricides and fratricides, may be rhetoric, but is 
certainly not truth. The terms are applicable only 



40 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

to those who, knowing what death is, and knowing the 
significance and sacredness of fatherhood and brother- 
hood, and knowing also that murder is a sin, do not- 
withstanding, slay father and brother. Who will 
affirm that even one of these conditions exists in the 
case of robins and cuckoos? That the deer makes 
strenuous efforts to escape the wolf, does not prove 
that the deer is aware of, and anticipates with horror, 
its impending doom. Any one who has tried to catch 
a skittish colt, or a young Texas steer, on the unf enced 
prairie, knows that they will make an equally des- 
perate effort to escape, whether your object be to send 
them to the butcher, or to give them a feed of corn in 
a comfortable stable. 

"We must keep in mind that these creatures while 
endowed with more than man's quickness of eye and 
ear, have infinitely less than man's powers of imagin- 
ation. That the tenants of the land and water 
flourish exceedingly, notwithstanding their constant 
liability to attack by enemies, proves that they endure 
none of the mental agonies to which we under like 
conditions should be subject, but pass their lives in 
unsuspecting enjoyment. Instead of sending forth 
her children to be ever harrassed by painful appre- 
hensions, nature weaves for them a protective mantle 
of mimicry, and w T eak things wear their fears in mani- 
fold broidery of plumage, and hair, and scale, upon 
their backs, instead of in their hearts." 

[H. H. Higgens.] 

As for the cloven worm, a recent writer remarks, 
"I suspect a good deal of sympathy has been wasted 
on the cloven worm. I am led to this opinion by the 
heartless conduct of the front end, which usually 
disappears down the hole. While the hinder part is 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 41 

enduring the tortures of the rack, the other part 
exhibits about as much discomfort or concern as the 
end of a freight train which has broken a coupling. 
Now, it may be, that one end of an earth worm is a 
delicate high-strung creature, and the other a cal- 
loused brute. It is however very much more likely 
that neither half has the least suspicion that any- 
thing is wrong. The front end crawls off, because it 
is a front end and can crawl. The rear end, lacking 
the usual attachment, can only go through the mo- 
tions of dragging itself up to the advancing front. 
There is really not the least evidence that the mental 
states of the worm, if it had any, are in the least 
degree altered, when it is cut in two, or strung on a 
hook. It would be possible to multiply indefinitely 
anecdotes of animals showing their indifference to 
pain. We are apt to forget that in spite of evolution, 
there is still, between ourselves and the lower animals 
a great gulf fixed. Whatever may have bridged that 
gulf once, the gulf is there now, and we only make 
ourselves ridiculous when we refuse to see it." 

[E. T. Brewster.] 

" I feel sure/' says Alfred Russell Wallace, " that the 
appearance of pain in the lower animals is often 
deceptive. The only true guide to the evolutionist, 
is a full and careful consideration of the amount of 
necessity there exists in each group for pain sensation 
to have been developed. 

"It depends fundamentally on utilities of life saving 
value, as required for the continuance of the race. 
Failure to take this into consideration results in the 
ludicrously exaggerated view, adopted by men of 
such calm judgment as Huxley, a view, almost as 



42 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

far removed from fact or science, as the purely 
imaginary dogma of the poet, 

"The poor beetle that we tread upon 
In corporal sufference feels a pang as great 
As when a giant dies." 

"Whatever the giant may feel, if the theory of 
evolution be true, the poor beetle certainly feels an 
almost irreducible minimum of pain, probably none 
at all." 

Up to the moment of dissolution the joy of life for 
every creature below the human race is probably 
unclouded. That the struggle for existence is an 
agonizing one, is a figment of the scientific imagina- 
tion, due to projecting into the animal world feelings 
exclusively human. We know how we should feel, 
and imagine the animals feel likewise, but this is 
absurd, for were we to live like animals, we should 
be miserable, while they flourish, proving that the 
gamut of their sensations is a very different one from 
ours. As Mill somewhere says, dirt is not uncomfort- 
able except to those who are unaccustomed to it. 

The contention of the votaries of woe is not borne 
out by the observed conditions. In the animal, as 
in the human world, evil is outweighed by good. 
This receives further support from a fact which 
sometimes fails of the recognition it deserves. 

Evil is outweighed by good, that is to say, good 
prevails in the world, for the reason that beauty 
prevails. 

None will deny that the world, as a whole, is 
beautiful. A branch quivers, a blossom sways, a 
breeze sweeps the surface of the lake, water falls 
over the cliff, day dawns, fruit ripens, every move- 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 43 

ment, every process, is marked by fitness, grace. 
When nature stirs, there is a concord of line, and 
mass, and tint, and tone. 

"Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
But it carves the bow of beauty there, 

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake." 

Even in her sterner manifestations, the belching 
crater, the roaring torrent, the lightning's flash, the 
upspringing flame, the storm's dark rush, nature is 
seen clothed in splendor and magnificence. Regions 
of dread exist, parched deserts, blizzard swept ice 
fields, malarial swamps, but their acreage forms no 
more than a fraction of the total. They are as the 
mole on Aphrodite's cheek, the one discordant meas- 
ure in the orchestration of the symphony. 

Objects and places which seem bare of every 
element of loveliness and altogether loathsome, as 
for example, the prisoner's cell, the noisome vault, 
the offal heap, have but to be examined with vision 
reenforced by the microscope, and all is changed. 
The hard stone of wall and roof becomes a mosaic of 
gem like crystals, the slimy fungus growths are seen 
to be in reality, forests and groves of graceful vege- 
tation, the decaying flesh vanishes and in its place 
are cell like structures radiant with all the colors of 
the rainbow. A lens reveals loveliness even in a 
maggot. Men of science tell us there is nothing 
intense light will not make beautiful. 

This holds true of the realm of life, as of physical 
nature. The dragon fly flashing his jewelled body 
across the lake, the soaring bird, the crouching tiger, 
grazing cattle, the stag drinking at the tarn, trout 



44 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

poising in the pool, throughout animated nature, 
richness of color, ease of action, strength and sym- 
metry, are in evidence. These qualities are scarcely 
less conspicuous in the human race. Man is a fair 
and comely creature when he permits nature to have 
her way with him. "Here as among most savages," 
writes Dr. A. R. Wallace in his " Malay Archepelago," 
"I was delighted with the beauty of the human 
form, a beauty of which stay-at-home people can 
scarcely have any conception." 

In spite of many shadows and much that is repellent, 
the general aspect of the world is unquestionably 
beautiful. This general loveliness of aspect would be 
impossible did not loveliness preponderate. Mineral, 
vegetable, animal, human, each has its characteristic 
mark, but the universal mark, stamped on all, is 
beauty. Beauty is the significant thing, the world's 
crowning quality. 

A universe in which there is a predominence of 
beauty, must have been brought forth by, and must 
be sustained by, a beauty loving power, and it is 
surely inconceivable that a beauty loving power 
should be other than a power of goodness. That 
beauty is the expression of goodness, will appear more 
clearly, if we keep in mind, that in the realm of life, 
beauty is associated invariably with health. 

Every one will agree that the glowing cheek, the 
sparkling eye, the upright carriage, are beautiful, and 
they are qualities of health. A horse in first rate 
condition, full of fire, and with glossy coat, is one of 
the handsomest creatures imaginable, and the points 
that constitute his handsomeness are all evidences of 
health. 

At an horticultural exhibition one sees a collec- 
tion of unusually lovely blossoms, and their unusual 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 45 

loveliness is due to the fact that every one of them 
has been selected as a blossom in perfect health. 
If we want beautiful men, women, animals, flowers, 
trees, we seek healthy men, women, animals, flowers, 
and trees. If there be any loveliness in a living 
creature stricken with disease, it is only in so far as 
it retains a remnant of life and health. 

Since beauty and health are synonymous, and since 
beauty in the world of life everywhere is in the 
ascendant, it would seem inevitably to follow that 
in the world of life, health also everywhere is in the 
ascendant. 

That existence among living creatures must be on 
the whole healthy, appears a reasonable conclusion, 
else how could life continue? 

No doubt there are deplorable facts to be accounted 
for, the victims of tuberculosis, cancer, malaria, pneu- 
monia, etc.; the host of those who are physically 
unfit, the blind, the deaf, the lame. A little reflection 
however, will convince us that after all, the number 
at any one time under the doctor's care, cannot be 
more than a small fraction of the population. It is 
certain that were it otherwise, the mills would shut 
down, the railroads cease to run, weeds would flourish 
in place of wheat and corn. The fact that industry 
thrives is proof that on the whole, and with the 
exception of a small minority, our people are in 
a condition of vigorous life and health. It is not 
of course for a moment contended that the sanitary 
state of the nation is all that can be desired, far 
from it. What is meant is, that conditions of health 
preponderate. It may be said without exaggeration 
that most people experience in the course of their 
lives more well days than ill days. 

Although much physical and mental disease exists, 



46 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

it is not enough to affect the general truth of the 
statement, that since the world of life is a world in 
which the dominant quality is beauty, it is a world in 
which the dominant quality is health. 

Health signifies freedom from pain, suffering, dis- 
comfort. The currents of life pulse through our 
arteries in a full tide, we experience a sense of buoy- 
ancy, we feel w 

Health therefore is a condition of well being. It is 
a joyful, pleasant, happy condition. Health and 
happiness go together, are inseparable, are the same 
thing. A healthy state is everywhere a happy state, 
and it is not to be denied that a happy state is a good 
state. 

Consequently, since happiness is equivalent to the 
good, and since it has been shown that beauty and 
therefore health, and therefore happiness, is the domi- 
nant quality of the realm of life, it follows that the 
good also is the dominant quality of the realm of life. 

Thus the witness of beauty confirms the conclusion 
reached by general observation, namely, that there is 
more good than evil in the world. It unites with 
the results of general observation to demonstrate not 
only that there is more good than evil, but an immense 
preponderance of good in the world. 

A power capable of producing a universe in which 
there is an immense preponderance of good, must 
itself be good. 

The truth of this is proved by the nature of evil. 
Evil is pain, pain is always evil. Pain is the poison, 
the sinister element. Whether the event be a wound, 
disease, accident, misfortune, sorrow, crime, whether 
it be voluntary or involuntary, physical, or mental, 
or moral, the element of evil therein, is the pain 
produced. 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 47 

Objections considered. 

Certain experiences seem difficult to reconcile with 
the above statement. 

1. Some evils appear devoid of pain: blindness 
for instance. — Do we regard blindness as devoid 
of pain? On the contrary, we judge it to be evil 
just because to an intelligent living creature, loss 
of sight always means misery. Mental diseases 
producing coma, automatism, unconsciousness, re- 
sult in a condition in which the subject is immune 
from pain, yet we reckon these diseases as evils. 
We do so, not because they bring immunity from 
pain, but because of the agony preceding the immu- 
nity. Moreover, in diseases of this kind, others 
besides the subjects themselves are affected. The 
mental affliction of one we have loved, causes suf- 
fering to a circle perhaps a very wide circle, of 
friends. 

2. Evils that are pleasureable. — Many people find 
opium and chloral delicious, and alcoholic intoxica- 
tion delightful. It is not the pleasure these things 
give that is evil. So long as pleasure is the sole result 
of their use, these things are not deleterious. They 
become so, they do harm, they are evil, just in so far 
as in spite of their joy giving properties, they involve 
pain to ourselves and others. 

Is not sin or moral delinquency evil? Yet many 
sins are not painful but on the contrary wholly 
pleasant. The point to keep in mind is, that it is 
not the pleasure to ourselves that makes the act 
sinful, immoral, but the pain it gives to others. If 
we could have the pleasure without hurting anyone 
else, no wrong would be done. An immoral act is 
one in which we inflict pain on others, in order to 
enjoy some pleasure or profit ourselves. The moral 



48 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

iniquity, the sin, is not our enjoyment of the pleasure 
or profit; pleasure and profit are in themselves always 
good; a pearl is still a pearl though it adorn a harlot's 
neck; the sin is in our willingness to enjoy pleasure 
or profit, at the cost of suffering to others. 

3. Pains that are beneficial. — For example, excru- 
ciating surgical or dental operations may be agonizing, 
yet of advantage. How then can such pains be evil? 
The benefit these things accomplish is accomplished 
in spite of the pain. In so far as they are painful they 
are evil. , 

Some pain strengthens and purifies. The pain of 
punishment, for instance. Some poisons, as strych- 
nine, heal disease when administered medicinally; 
but in these cases the instrument of healing remains 
itself a deadly thing. The poisonous medicine cures 
by arousing the reserve forces of physical nature. 
The poison of pain cures by arousing the reserve forces 
of the soul. 

In the pain of punishment, the purpose is to quicken 
the reserves of moral energy. The culprit is stirred 
into a condition of active repentance and reform, and 
is made a new man. Nevertheless, the pain which 
brings about this highly beneficial state, is itself evil, 
and if continued too long, or administered in too 
large doses, would result in the destruction, instead 
of in the reformation of the subject. 

The sooner we outgrow the necessity for using 
poison and pain, the sooner, that is, we reach a con- 
dition of mental and physical health, the better. 

As things are, our present imperfect state compels 
us to make-shift with these imperfect remedies. Nor 
is it likely that in doing so we are going far astray, 
for the Creator himself inflicts a certain amount of 
pain upon all sentient creatures. 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 49 

4. Even when associated with virtue, pain is still an 
evil. — A morally good action may necessitate pain, 
but it is not the pain that constitutes the moral good- 
ness, the virtue. Under all circumstances pain is 
evil. The moral excellence consists in willingness 
to endure the evil of pain, in order to promote a 
greater good to our neighbor. 

Jim Bludsoe held the burning steamer's " nozzle 
agin the bank till the last soul got ashore/ ' and him- 
self perished in the flames. The excellence of the 
deed we so much admire, was not in the agony experi- 
enced, but in the hero's willingness to suffer the 
agony for the sake of his fellow men. 

Morality does not change the nature of evil, it 
changes only our attitude toward it on particular 
occasions. 

On particular occasions our sense of moral obliga- 
tion bids us forego advantage to ourselves, lest we 
inflict pain on others, and endure pain ourselves, if 
thereby, we can benefit others. 

In moral situations as in all situations, evil is pain, 
pain is always evil. 

The nature of pain. 

Pain is the outcome of defect, it is a state of im- 
perfection, of defective or imperfect health. 

It is accompanied always by lowered vitality, and 
lowered vitality is characteristic of ill health. If 
inflammation shows increased vital activity at one 
particular spot, it is at the expense of the system as 
a whole. 

Although a patient suffering from some forms of 
insanity may be endowed with the strength of ten, 
and with a restless energy wel; nigh insatiable, this 



50 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

cannot be regarded as an addition to the vital powers. 
Rather is it due to the removal by disease of normally 
restraining conditions, which removal permits the 
vital energies to expend themselves violently and 
irregularly. Such headlong and wasteful expenditure 
of force implies no real gain to the total volume of 
force, but on the contrary, a distinct impairment of 
the general stock. This applies also, to the seemingly 
increased vital action induced by the pain of whip 
and spur. 

Under all circumstances lowered vitality goes with 
pain, and lowered vitality signifies lowered health. 
Being a state of lowered vitality, pain therefore, is 
a state of lowered, defective, or imperfect health. 

Since evil is pain, it follows that evil also, is a state 
of defect or imperfection, a state of defective or 
imperfect health. 

From this, what appears a conspicuous exception 
leaps to view. Positive and aggressive acts of wicked- 
ness. This kind of evil must be, it would seem, some- 
thing more than imperfection. It looks as if the evil 
of sin were due to an independent force antagonistic 
to good. 

The burglar fells the inconvenient householder with 
a blow on the head. The assassin drops his victim 
with a revolver shot. These are sinful deeds, and 
they are deeds of power, they exhibit positiveness, 
and forceful skill. Othello, in the play, beside himself 
with jealousy, slays Desdemona. An act of violence 
involving tremendous effort and a fierce and furious 
exercise of strength. 

Nevertheless, is it not possible for an event to be 
positive and forceful in itself, and at the same time 
relatively weak and negative, exhibiting relatively, 
a lack of force, an imperfection of power? 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 51 

For instance the report of a rifle is positive enough 
in itself, forceful, sharp, and ear piercing. Yet com- 
pared with the report of a twelve inch gun the crack 
of a rifle is a weak, puny, imperfect kind of explo- 
sion. 

Regarded as isolated events, the acts of the burglar 
and assassin are manifestations of power. The ele- 
ment of loss or imperfection does not appear. 

Regarded as activities of men, they assume a dif- 
ferent aspect. What they represent as human deeds, 
can be estimated only by comparing them with 
human energies as a whole. How, then, do these 
particular deeds stand, when compared with the total 
amount of activity possible to the individuals con- 
cerned? 

In the case of Othello, the murder of Desdemona 
necessitated the expenditure of much energy. This, 
however, was not the only course of action open to 
Othello. He might have refrained from murdering 
Desdemona. Why did he not refrain? There is only 
one imaginable explanation. It was harder to re- 
frain than to yield to his passion. Great as was the 
effort demanded by the murder, to refrain from the 
murder demanded a still greater effort. To hold his 
hand required an exercise of self control so severe, 
that Othello shrank from making the effort. Finding 
it easier to yield to the impulse of passion than to 
control the impulse, Othello yielded. Immense as 
was the energy expended in committing the crime, it 
was less than the energy he would have had to expend 
in refraining from the crime. 

The same is true of the burglar and assassin. They 
could have led decent lives and been good, industrious 
citizens, but such a course required an exercise of self 
denying will they found it hard to make. To prey 



52 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

upon society, to drift down the stream of vagrancy, 
or. to sweep along in the furious current of revenge 
and hate, was easier than to make head against the 
flood. 

The sinful acts in the examples cited sprang from 
an effort of the will weaker and feebler than it might 
have been, and ought to have been. 

In every instance sin is due to a defective or im- 
perfect action of the will, for which we are respon- 
sible and to blame. 

Like all other evil, the evil of sin is a form of imper- 
fection. 

In what way does this affect the subject under 
discussion, namely, the goodness of the Controller of 
the universe? 

It affects it to the extent of barring out evil alto- 
gether from the nature of the Controller. 

The infinite and eternal power of life whence all 
things proceed, is in every respect supreme and 
omnipotent, for there is none to dispute its rule, no 
rival to contest its sway. 

Absolutely free and untrammelled, whatever limi- 
tations its activities assume, whatever modifications 
they adopt, are self assumed and self adopted. 

Originating and controlling as it does all things 
and all powers, it possesses all things and all powers. 

As a consequence it falls short of, and is lacking 
in, nothing. 

An existence absolutely free, nowhere hindered or 
thwarted, falling short of, and lacking, nothing, is 
one in which every function fulfills itself and every 
quality manifests itself, in the highest degree of which 
its nature permits, and such an existence embodies 
the idea contained in the word perfection. The exist- 
ence of the infinite and eternal Producer and Con- 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 53 

troller of all things, is perfect existence. From this 
it follows, that in the nature of the Infinite and 
Eternal, there can be no evil, for evil is imperfect 
existence. 

The character of evil itself, therefore, both con- 
firms the conclusion drawn from the preponderance 
of good, and carries that conclusion a step further. 
We now see that the world Controller being free from 
imperfection, and so completely free from evil, is in 
consequence, good, not merely to a predominating 
extent, but altogether and absolutely good. In the 
soul's universe a power of perfect goodness rules. 

3. The place of evil in the scheme of things. — If good- 
ness rule, how account for the evil that actually exists? 

To many it seems vain to talk of a righteous and 
kindly Providence in view of the appalling amount of 
misery visible on every hand. Can disasters and 
calamities happen and the supposed ruler and author 
of nature still be merciful, and just and good? How 
are these seemingly irreconcilable facts to be recon- 
ciled? Some attempt to explain evil as a delusion. 
It is a phantom and has no existence, they say. The 
most brilliant refutation of this extraordinary fallacy 
is probably the well known essay by Mark Twain, 
and to this the reader is referred. Another solution 
of the paradox has been attempted on the ground of 
indifference. Preoccupied with the creation and 
control of myriad worlds, why should we suppose the 
Lord of the universe to be other than heedless of our 
microscopic woes? Forgotten by God, it is inevitable 
that we should fall a prey to evil. The reply is, 
indifference to suffering is incompatible with even a 
moderate amount of goodness, still less with the power 
of perfect goodness by which we have assumed the 
universe to be ruled. 



54 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Some have sought to account for evil by imputing 
it to a hostile power. The world is divided between 
two rival and co-equal divinities, an Ormuzd and an 
Ahriman, who carry on unceasing warfare. This 
theory is inadmissible, giving to creation as it does, 
a double origin, and placing it under a two-fold regime, 
a notion at odds with the accepted principle of science 
that the universe is a single organized whole, con- 
trolled by a single supreme power. 

Another doctrine ascribes the source of evil to an 
antagonistic and independent, but not co-equal 
power. A fallen angel, a satan, a devil, who while 
maintaining temporary hostilities is in the end des- 
tined to be vanquished and destroyed. This idea has 
the advantage of leaving the supreme power intact. 
Its defect is lack of evidence. There is nothing to 
show that it is true. 

A less extravagant supposition will suffice to account 
for all the ill there is. 

No other, or rival, power being possible as the source 
of evil, the Infinite and Eternal is its source. Since 
it can be due neither to the weakness, nor the error, 
nor the indifference, it must be due to the purpose 
and intention, of the Infinite and Eternal. Since the 
Infinite and Eternal is absolutely good, the fact we 
face is, that all the evil in the universe has its source 
in the purpose and intention of the absolutely good. 

"I form the light and create darkness. I make 
peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things." 

[Isaiah 45, 7] 

What are we to make of such a situatioji? That 
good and evil should issue from the same source 
appears to some minds beyond comprehension. 

"To present God as the responsible cause of the 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 55 

enormity of suffering and of moral evil, and at the 
same time to present him as the perfect impersona- 
tion of justice and love, should by this time be seen 
to involve a hopeless contradiction, the conflict of 
two principles in irreconcilable antagonism/' writes 
G. H. Howison. 

[Hibbert Journal.] 

Notwithstanding the formidable tone of this assev- 
eration; that God is responsible for all suffering, that 
whatsoever misery there be, exists not in spite of, but 
because of, his power, is the conclusion to which we 
are forced alike by reason, experience, and observa- 
tion. There is no rational alternative. So far from 
containing a " hopeless contradiction," or principles 
"in irreconcilable antagonism/ ' this is the only con- 
clusion free from contradictions and antagonisms. 

Do not the plain facts of life bear witness that good 
and evil constantly issue from an identical source? 
Good people inflict evil out of their very goodness. 
Every physician, every magistrate, every commander, 
imposes suffering, hard work, perilous enterprises, 
upon his fellow creatures. Every prison, reformatory, 
operating theater, is the scene of human suffering 
prescribed by benevolent and kindly beings. 

One of the most pathetic sights the present writer 
ever saw was the children's w^rd of a certain great 
hospital. The diseases under treatment were chiefly 
those of the spine. On every side lay pitiful little 
objects, some bound hand and foot, others stretched 
at full length, with weights attached. The feet of 
several were clamped in rack-like machinery, none 
could move, or sit up, or play, or see anything save 
the bare white walls. "Here indeed/' the visitor from 
another planet might exclaim, "is proof of the in- 



56 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

herent fiendishness of man." Appearances would 
justify his gloomy inference. Yet we know how far 
from the truth the inference would be. Were he to 
penetrate beneath appearances, he would discover all 
this misery to be the outcome, not of malevolence or 
cruelty, but of a devotion, a care, a forethought, a 
tenderness little short of heavenly. 

In examples such as these, we do actually see evil 
and good issuing from a common source of goodness. 
Coming from such a source, evil possesses a certain 
mark and character. 

Whatever be the nature of the suffering inflicted 
by good men and women, always and everywhere, 
with no exception, its impelling motive is one of benev- 
olence. Pain may be imposed, intense suffering may 
result, still the intention is benevolent, the purpose 
remedial. 

If this be true of the evil permitted and inflicted 
by the imperfect goodness of men and women, still 
more must it be true of the evil permitted and inflicted 
by the perfect goodness of the Infinite and Eternal. 

Since evil issuing from good has invariably a benev- 
olent and remedial intent, and since all the evil in 
the universe issues in the last resort from the perfect 
goodness of the Infinite and Eternal, all the evil in 
the universe is of the kind which is freighted with 
benevolent and remedial intent. 

"The clouds which rise in thunder, slake 

Our thirsty souls with rain. 
The blow most dreaded, falls to break 

From off our limbs a chain. 
And wrongs of man to man but make, 

The love of God more plain. 
As through the shadowy lens of even 
The eye looks farthest into heaven, 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 57 

On gleams of star and depths of blue, 
The glaring sunshine never knew." 

Whittier. 

From this general truth there is an obvious excep- 
tion. In the suffering caused by sin, in the misery 
thrust upon us by human carelessness, indolence, 
viciousness, we have a form of evil issuing, not from 
a benevolent, but from a malevolent, source. Its 
motive instead of being remedial, is either indifferent 
to consequences, or positively cruel and malignant. 

Black as the fact of sin is, its most baleful effects 
are neutralized by the peculiar relations which exist 
between the sinner and his surroundings. 

The doer of evil lives in a universe stronger than 
himself. Consequently, while he is able to deter- 
mine his own intentions, he cannot determine any- 
thing else. The initial impulse, he may make as 
malevolent as he chooses, but he is powerless to make 
the outcome malevolent. The moment an evil im- 
pulse leaves his mind and becomes embodied in a 
deed, it falls into a sphere beyond his range of in- 
fluence. From that moment his control over what 
has left him, is lost. 

Now the universe into which the evil impulse falls 
is one governed by good, one in which, as we have seen, 
all suffering and pain is of the kind that comes from 
goodness, of the kind therefore, that makes for the 
ultimate welfare of the sufferer. When the malevo- 
lent impulse passes from the wrong-doer's mind, and 
enters as action into the universe, the universe closes 
round it, so to speak. From that instant, it ceases 
to be suffering issuing from the sinner, and becomes a 
part of the suffering which issues from the universe. 
Thereupon its character is changed. No longer evil 



58 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

produced by evil, it becomes evil produced by good; 
— by the good universe. 

In spite of the sinner's malevolent intent, the 
misery he seeks to inflict falls into line, and instead 
of ruining, will be found in the long run to have 
helped his victim. 

Joseph is left at the bottom of a dry cistern to perish 
of hunger and thirst. That is the cruel intention. 
The result, utterly unlooked for, is that he becomes 
ruler of Egypt. 

A treacherous friend blasts Silas Marner's reputa- 
tion and forces him out upon the world apparently a 
ruined man. The traitor's intention was malevolent. 
He succeeded in inflicting agonising pain upon his 
victim. The outcome, nevertheless, was very different 
from that which malevolence desired. The suffering 
contributed, not to the destruction of Silas, but to 
his regeneration. 

"So, almost without a pause between, he (the 
Major) had prayed for a hell to punish a crime, and 
for the safety of the treasured thing that was its 
surviving record, a creature that but for that crime 
would never have drawn breath.' ' 

["Somehow Good", Wm. de Morgan] 

It is, of course, but here and there that we are able 
to discern the issue. Could we trace to their ultimate 
destination the series of consequences that follow 
our misdeeds, we should find that always for our 
victims, they lead at last to good. What else is to 
be expected? The moment the evil impulse leaves 
the limited circle in which we rule, it enters a region 
where the forces behind it are the wholly benevolent 
and omnipotent forces of the eternal. The wicked 
man can originate independently, but he cannot 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 59 

execute independently. The consequences of his vile 
purposes are beyond his control, and by the marvel- 
lous alchemy of the universe the actions he intends 
shall promote evil, are transmuted to the service of 
the world. 

Such, unquestionably, will be the result for the 
victim, the case of the sinner is likely to be very 
different. "It must needs be that offences come, but 
woe to that man by whom the offence cometh" 
The sinner does what nothing else ever does, he acts 
with malevolence. Of malice aforethought he adds 
to the sum of pain, and although for his victim the 
beneficence of the world will, in the end, neutralize 
the malicious intention, the sinner's guilt remains. 
He intends malevolence, and thus introduces discord 
into the harmony of things, disturbs the universal 
order, pits himself against the universe, attempts to 
resist the irresistible. The issue is not doubtful. 
Unconditional surrender is the sinner's solitary hope. 

To the truth that all the evil in the world is of the 
kind that comes from goodness, and promotes, in the 
long run, the welfare of the sufferer, there is but a 
single exception, namely, the evil of sin, and that is 
an exception only as regards the sinner himself. 

Evil is the consequence of the capacities with which we 
are endowed. 

The immediate and efficient causes of sorrow lie in 
ourselves. The world does us no harm. Harm comes 
from our misuse of, and misunderstanding of, the 
world. 

The sole sources of pain are the imperfections of 
our knowledge and our morals. Ignorance and selfish- 
ness are the breeders of ill. For the evil we endure, 



60 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

God is responsible to the extent that he has created 
us imperfect. 

Why has he created us imperfect? Apparently, 
because that is the only way in which we could be 
created. Since the Creator himself is perfect, and 
since all created things are less than their creator, 
all created things are of necessity, less than perfect. 

We suffer, not merely because we are imperfect, 
but because we are imperfect human beings, with 
souls, possessed of sensibilities. Because we hope, 
love, desire. 

"Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Never met and never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken hearted." 

From these sad sensations we might have been 
saved had we been placed lower down in the scale, 
endowed with vegetable, instead of with human 
natures. Yet, most of us feel that salvation on such 
terms is scarcely worth while. Not even to get rid 
of a toothache would we be turned into a potato. 

Still another course is imaginable. Had we been 
placed higher up, instead of lower down, created 
mature from the start, with our faculties developed to 
the full, and working in undeviating accord with their 
surroundings, it seems as though we should have 
escaped the bitter episode of pain. Does not this 
motion involve a contradiction? We are conscious 
beings with all the wonderful possibilities this implies. 
Now, the plan above suggested might be fatal to 
experience, and it might be that without experience, 
consciousness could never be other than a pale 
phantom of its proper self. Like children learning to 
walk, we learn to live, and while we learn, we trip and 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 61 

fall, and bump our heads against the corners of the 
world. It is unpleasant, but if it be the only way to 
build up consciousness, then, the temporary liability 
to pain may not be too high a price to pay. 

"I know a limped stream that seeks the sea, 

Between a surge of sedges fair it flows, 
With scarce a ripple stirring its repose, 

The very mirror of serenity. 
From its well head till ocean claims its fee, 

It breasts no barrier, daytime, dawn, or close, 
Behold it still the same, come heat or snows, 

With gentle murmur gliding tranquilly. 

"Not thus would I move outward to the deep 
Toward which all mortals hasten, with no bar 

To overcome before I gain the goal. 

Rather would I on some stern struggle leap, 

Although my flesh be scored with wound and scar, 
Inuring thus the fibre of my soul." 

Once more, could not our woes have been avoided, 
while retaining our human faculties, if we had been 
placed in a situation like the following? 

"I know a place," writes T. Van Ness, " where men 
do not smoke nor drink, where they are industrious 
and orderly, where they rise on time and go to bed on 
time, where there are no differences of rank or station, 
and where the table of one is as well served as the 
table of the other, where on Sundays in the most 
decorous manner they one and all go to religious 
service, and maintain correct behaviour, taking part 
in unison when hymn and liturgy are announced. 
This place is the Colorado Penitentiary at Canyon 
City. Law reigns there. It is the law of compulsion, 
of the shot gun. No personal liberty is allowed.' ' 



62 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

The Creator might have made us prisoners in a 
penitentiary. Under such conditions we should have 
been exempt from the greater part of the difficulties, 
troubles, dangers, that now beset us. We should have 
been protected from all those sources of suffering 
caused by our errors, miscalculations, and ignorance. 
That has not been the method. Instead, we have 
been clothed with sensibilities, and endowed with 
liberty, and the evils we encounter are the conse- 
quences of these gifts. 

Although our sensibilities and our liberty are the 
sources of all our woe, they are the sources also, of 
all our happiness. This, Shelley discerned when he 
wrote : 

" Yet if we could scorn 

Hate and pride and fear, 
If we were things born, 

Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy, 

We ever should come near." 

Heartrending as our sufferings often are, we carry 
with us the key of the door of deliverance. Pain and 
sorrow being due to imperfection, the result of the 
immaturity of the capacities with which we are gifted, 
as we advance in wisdom and strength of will, as we 
come to be more and more nearly "in tune with the 
infinite," we may confidently look to see pain and 
sorrow forever left behind. 

Summarizing the foregoing chapter. 

We found that behind all things is one thing, and 
that one thing is a power of conscious life. Observa- 
tion indicates and the witness of beauty proves, that 
in spite of a vast amount of misery the good in the 



THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 63 

world outweighs the evil. From which the inference 
follows that good outweighs evil also, in the power 
of conscious life that brought forth the world. A 
study of evil itself, led to the conclusion that good 
not only outweighs evil in the nature of the supreme 
power, but predominates to the complete exclusion 
of it, with the consequence that the supreme power 
is wholly and altogether good. The goodness which 
rules over, and in, and through the universe, is perfect 
goodness. 

This ruling goodness is, we saw, no mere passive, 
static, quality, but an infinite and eternal energy. 
Its relation to the universe is therefore, an energetic, 
a dynamic, relation. The influence exercised is one 
of movement, of compelling power, of driving force. 

How is this situation to be interpreted? It would 
seem as though there could be but one interpretation. 
Behind all things is a driving force, infinite and eter- 
nal. Consequently, no region, no spot, escapes its 
pressure. The pressure is exerted not only at every 
point, but at every point it is exerted through every 
moment of time. The driving force exercising this 
pressure, is, it has been shown, a force of goodness. 
One outcome alone is conceivable to such a situation. 
Sooner or later, all things and all beings, will be 
subject to, will become dominated by, this irresistible 
energy of goodness, with the result that whatever is 
contrary to goodness, will be expelled from all things 
and all beings. Goodness will occupy every nook and 
cranny of the kosmos, will pervade every fibre of 
every individual soul. 



CHAPTER V 

Soul and Oversoul 

In his "Farthest North' ' Nansen tells us that an 
Eskimo will always leave untouched the driftwood 
left by another above high water mark, although fuel 
is more precious than gold and often enough i,t could 
be appropriated without fear of detection. 

Landing in a native village in West Africa, Mary 
Kingsley was freely given the use of a new house for 
which at the end of her stay the owner refused to 
receive any remuneration, on the ground that strangers 
should be housed without charge. 

Plainly the impelling motive in these instances was 
a feeling about right. 

All the great travellers and explorers bear witness 
to a sense of right, even in the remotest corners of the 
earth and among nations the most diverse. Its uni- 
versality is confirmed by the religions, the philoso- 
phies, the literatures, of the world It is assumed 
by our educational, legal, and commercial systems. 
That it has been possible to establish business rela- 
tions with even the wildest tribes is proof that even 
the wildest tribes have a moral standard, though it 
may be a different one from ours, and hold themselves 
under an obligation to keep to it. 

The feeling that right ought to be done, is common 
to humanity. Were any one to admit that he had no 
such feeling, the admission would stamp him who 
made it as inhuman. Manifesting itself in varying 

64 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 65 

degrees in different individuals, it is absent in none. 
Clearer in maturity than in childhood, more strongly 
marked among civilized than among savage people, 
in all natures that are human it exists. 

Present everywhere, it is the same everywhere. 
The standard may differ, the outcome may differ, 
but the feeling that right ought to be done is identical, 
unchanging, and unchangeable. A greater contrast 
could scarcely be imagined than Gladstone's moral 
attitude toward certain subjects at succeeding periods 
of his life. In 1831, as an Oxford undergraduate, he 
believed he was pursuing the course of duty in vehe- 
mently opposing the Reform Bill, and pleading for 
the continuance of slave labor in the West Indies. 
Ten years afterward, we find him taking an entirely 
new position and upholding with passion, power, 
and eloquence, precisely those things which in his 
earlier days he had regarded as full of peril. Look- 
ing at Gladstone's conduct superficially, it seems as 
though his motive had veered completely round. A 
closer view shows that on the contrary, different as 
were his lines of action, the underlying impulse re- 
mained the same. On each occasion, his endeavor 
was to carry out the felt obligation that right ought 
to be done. 

The unstable element, the movable section, so to 
speak, consisted in the varying estimate of what 
constituted the particular right on the particular 
occasion. This, it is obvious, may change every 
day, even every hour of every day, without affecting 
the impression that whatever the right be, it ought to 
be done. Through all changes this remains unchanged 
the same feeling under every vicissitude. It is a 
permanent and constant quantity. Everywhere, and 
under all circumstances, and from generation to gen- 



66 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

eration, it prompts us whenever two alternatives 
are. before us to select that which appears to be 
right. 

As the mariner's compass still points north, though 
the ship shift her course a hundred times, so the com- 
pass of our souls, however often we shift the direction 
of our activities, points constantly toward the right. 
It will be conceded by almost everybody, that in this 
universal and permanent feeling there is a quality 
of authority. We are conscious that we ought to do 
right. 

Ought, is perhaps the most significant word in the 
language. It expresses relationship of a peculiar 
kind. A relationship of moral obligation. There is 
not the slightest compulsion, and yet this feeling of 
ought, of moral obligation, wields a strange authority. 
It seems to lay upon us a claim of allegiance. "To 
obey me is your duty," it whispers, and in our hearts 
we acknowledge the claim is just. 

"So potent is its sway," says Darwin, "that man is 
often impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or 
duty, to sacrifice his life in some great cause." He 
mentions three Patagonian Indians, who preferred 
being shot, one after another, to betraying the plan 
of their companions in war. 

A missionary in Madras, called upon to visit a dying 
leper, and regarding it as his duty to give to those at 
the point of death the kiss of peace, hesitated on this 
occasion. He himself was a Eurasian, and he be- 
lieved that to Eurasians, actual contact with leprosy 
was invariably fatal. He turned to flee, terrified 
at the situation, but his sense of moral obligation 
would not let him go. Leaning against the door- 
post he wrestled with his fears. On the one side, 
certain contamination with resulting death in slow 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 67 

and loathsome form. On the other, the convic- 
tion that at whatever cost, that which he believed 
to be right ought to be done. With such over- 
whelming authority did this conviction make itself 
felt, that he conquered his shrinking flesh, returned 
to the bedside, and though trembling with dread, 
pressed with his lips the swollen, blackened coun- 
tenance.* 

The sovereignty this sense of duty exercises over 
our minds is indicated, also, by the consequences 
which ensue when we shape our conduct in defiance 
of its bidding. We are tormented with an inward 
accusation of unworthiness. We recognize that the 
part we have played is despicable. 

Every year, the United States Treasury receives 
thousands of dollars from correspondents who conceal 
their names. They are people who in various ways 
have defrauded the revenue and Wish to make restitu- 
tion. An examination of the letters on file at the 
Treasury would convince any one that most of the 
contributors are sincerely repentant for some fraud 
on the government. Rarely does any sum come with- 
out an explanatory letter, and it is unusual to have 
any name signed. Some of the returns are trifling. 
One poor fellow makes restitution for two loads of 
wood he had stolen from the government reservation, 
saying, "let him that stole steal no more." 

No one except themselves was aware of what these 
people had done. Yet, so powerful was the demand 
of the sense of moral obligation, that they were mis- 
erable until, to the best of their ability, they had 
atoned for their wrong doing. 

* See, Guy de Maupassant's tale, "The Two Friends." 



68 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

The broad fact is, that human beings feel themselves 
subject to an authoritative influence, a sense of ought, 
urging them toward what they believe to be right. 

Whence does this influence, this sense of ought, 
derive its authority? What is its source? 

Some writers affirm that its source is in self interest 
and prudence. Right pays, honesty is the best policy. 
Goodness is neither more nor less than sound worldly 
wisdom. 

That many good deeds are due to the prudence of 
worldly wisdom, cannot be denied. The copper, king, 
or the oil magnate, endows a hospital or a college, 
with the worldly wise purpose of gaining thereby social 
honors, but if prudence were the only source of good 
deeds, only prudent good deeds would be done, 
whereas, there are many, and they are those we admire 
most, which are the opposite of prudent. 

Captain Gates drags himself from the storm bat- 
tered tent, out to death in the cold of the Antarctic 
night, that the safety of his comrades may not be 
imperilled by the burden of his sick body. 

Miss Jewel H. Reed, aged seventeen, student, hav- 
ing escaped from her burning dormitory, discovered 
that two girls, probably rendered unconscious by the 
smoke, had been left in an upper story. She deter- 
mined to try and save them. Reentering the blazing 
house, she made her way through the flame and smoke, 
and succeeded in reaching the girls' room, but a fresh 
outburst of fire cut off the exit and she was burned 
to death. 

A mill operative lost his arm, as a result of certain 
machinery being out of order. "If you want to keep 
your job," said the mill owners to the superintendent, 
"you must report the machinery as all right, else we 
shall have to pay heavy compensation.' ' 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 69 

The superintendent found himself up against a try- 
ing proposition. He must report an untruth or be 
summarily dismissed. He was a middle aged man. 
It was hard to be turned out into the world at his 
time of life. Nevertheless, he chose that course, lost 
his job, and died in comparative poverty. 

All will agree that the impelling motive behind these 
actions was a feeling of ought, of duty, a sense of right. 
The source of this motive could not be prudence, for 
the actions to which it impelled were the contrary 
of prudent. 

We see then, that in addition to good deeds done 
from motives of worldly wisdom, there are good deeds 
done from a sense of right, and into the motive of 
these, the element of prudence does not enter. 

When a man is inspired by a deep sense of right, he 
acts without regard to consequences. In the cause 
of justice and mercy he is ready to fling forethought 
to the winds, and risk the loss of worldly possessions 
and even life itself. 

In such cases, it is said, prudence is still the motive. 
The self-forgetful hero who thinks nothing of conse- 
quences, does so only in appearance. He looks to 
consequences just as carefully as anyone else, but the 
consequences to which he looks, instead of being in 
this world, are in the next. He expects to be rewarded 
in heaven for his righteous conduct on earth. 

The conviction that glory awaits the hero in 
another world undoubtedly has inspired heroic deeds. 
Can it be said, however, that the inspiration in such 
instances is a sense of right? 

With the vision of the black eyed houris of paradise 
flaming in his brain, the follower of the Mahdi hurls 
himself upon the bayonets of the British square. 
Brave as the deed is, if the joys of paradise be its 



70 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

inspiration, its motive must be ascribed to a hope 
of gain, rather than to a sense of moral obliga- 
tion. 

On the other hand, so profound an observer of 
human nature as Tolstoy, bears witness that a man 
may be moved not by hope of gain, but solely by a 
sense of right, and when so moved, is capable, without 
any expectation of reward either on earth or in 
heaven, of as complete a sacrifice as that of the follower 
of theMahdi. 

In his story, " Divine and Human," Svetlogo,ub, the 
principle character, a rich young man, enjoys life to the 
full. At last, the sight of the people's misery awakens 
his moral sense. So great does he feel its authority to 
be, that he is impelled thereby to devote his time and 
money to philanthropic purposes. As a result of 
helping a revolutionary friend, he is arrested, and 
condemned to death. By revealing to the govern- 
ment his friend's name, he himself could escape. 
The temptation is almost irresistible, but the author- 
ity of his consciousness that right ought to be done 
is strong enough to enable him to stand firm, and 
he goes to his execution without uttering the incrim- 
inating word. 

In Svetlogoub's case, at any rate, the sense of moral 
obligation by which he was impelled cannot have had 
its origin in self-interest, for he surrenders everything 
in this world, and has no faith whatever in a world to 
come. 

Self interest is the source of many good deeds, but 
not of the good deeds inspired by a feeling of duty, of 
ought. 

If the feeling about right does not arise from pru- 
dential motives from what does it arise? 

It arises, say some, from social motives. It is due 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 71 

to the educative influences brought to bear on us by 
Society. 

The question being the genesis of the moral sense, 
of its birth, and its beginning, this theory postulates, 
to start with, a state of society in which morals are 
as yet non-existent, and assumes that at some particu- 
lar moment through the action of this unmoral society, 
morals were brought forth. 

It will hardly be disputed that non-moral societies 
are moved by non-moral motives; motives, that is, 
which have no reference to right and wrong. It will 
be conceded further, that all human motives other 
than those connected with right and wrong, may be 
classified as motives of pleasure and pain, "our two 
sovereign masters." We have thus, to start with, a 
condition of society the moving impulses of which 
are those of pleasure and pain. 

What kind of influences can a society so moved, 
bring to bear upon its individual members? It can 
bring to bear in the first place, the influence of the 
whole over the part, of the greater over the less, of 
the majority over the minority, of the stronger over 
the weaker, the influences namely, of force, of com- 
pulsion. 

It can bring to bear in the second place, influences 
which operate through the desire for pleasure, the 
fear of pain; that is to say, through hope of reward 
and the dread of punishment, through bribery and 
the "big stick." 

Force, cupidity, fear, then, are the instruments an 
unmoral society has it in its power to use. 

It is reasonable to imagine that using these instru- 
ments with relentless severity, a certain order and 
discipline might be secured. The strong might be 



72 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

able to bribe and flog the weak into submission to the 
rules which the strong ordained. 

' For the coerced masses these rules might become 
the indisputable law. Such a social organization 
might be orderly and obedient to a very high degree; 
nevertheless, the order and obedience would be those 
of the barracks and the penitentiary. The discipline 
would be of the kind maintained by the whip of the 
master over a gang of slaves. 

The theory we are discussing, assumes a very 
different result. It supposes that by the use of 
these social instruments a feeling of right and wrong 
will be engendered. That in time the coerced masses 
would come to obey because of a consciousness that 
they ought. 

If only these social influences be continued long 
enough it is said, the result will be a moral sense. 

Yet surely it is self-evident that these expectations 
are groundless. "From such materials, a million 
years will no more generate a conscience, than they 
will raise a cedar of Lebanon from a chalk stone.' ' 

In what imaginable way can the social influences 
of compulsion, cupidity, and fear, create a sense of 
moral obligation, of loyalty to duty? 

How can compulsion create it? Our experience is 
not that we are compelled to do right, but that we 
ought to do it. 

How can expectation of rewards, or fear of punish- 
ment, create it? The moral sense bids us do right 
whatever the consequences. 

By such means the feeling of moral obligation might 
be strengthened in an individual already possessed of 
a moral sense, but it is as inconceivable that social 
influences of compulsion, cupidity, and fear, could 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 73 

produce a moral consciousness where none existed, 
as to suppose the chromatic scale could be produced 
on the keyboard of a piano in which every string 
was of the same length, merely by diligent strum- 
ming. 

Society can coerce, bribe or threaten us into con- 
sent to, or conformity with, its customs and con- 
ventions; but that conformity with social conven- 
tions is one thing, and our feeling about right quite 
another, is proved by the fact that the latter often 
impels us to take a stand in irreconcilable opposition 
to the former. 

Again and again men and women have flatly 
antagonized not only the customs of society hallowed 
by long descent, but things which society regards as 
its vital interests. 

A Wyclif and a Luther raise their voices against 
the creeds of centuries. A Thomas Clarkson and a 
Granville Sharp head an unpopular movement for 
the abolition of the slave trade, a movement which 
seemed to their contemporaries to strike at the roots 
of vested interests and to threaten the privileges of 
private property. In innumerable other instances we 
see the feeling about right prompting to courses in 
uncompromising antagonism to social usages. How 
can it be the product of that to which it is capable of 
irreconcilably opposing itself? - 

Another school finds the source in our animal 
ancestors, in forms of life lower than our own. 

No one denies that many objects are derived from 
predecessors externally unlike themselves. The bird 
from the egg, the plant from the seed, for example, 
but no one doubts that internally and actually egg 
and seed contain the embryo respectively of bird 



74 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

and plant. When it is said that the source of morals 
is in the lower forms of animal life, we are assuming 
that moral natures have issued from natures, by impli- 
cation, destitute of even the embryo of morality. 
This is irrational. We can no more grow a sense of 
right out of elements destitute of a sense of right, than 
we can grow a crop of wheat by plowing the sea 
sands. Some minds seem to think that everything 
is explained by the term amalgamation. That some- 
how if we mix things well enough and long enough 
miraculous results ensue. But if there be pnly por- 
ridge in the pot, only porridge will come out of the 
pot for all our stirring. The outcome of the mixing 
will be always of the same order as that to which 
belong the ingredients mixed. 

The inherent unsoundness of the principle which 
would draw our feeling that right ought to be done, 
from natures that have no such feeling, is to some 
extent hidden by the specious language in which it 
is usually expressed. Darwin, for instance, in his 
"Descent of Man," says that it seems to him in a high 
degree probable "that any animal whatever, endowed 
with well marked social instincts, would inevitably 
acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as the 
intellectual powers had become as well developed, or 
nearly as well developed, as in man." 

It is difficult to see how "social instincts" can 
mean anything else than impulses of gregariousness 
prompting individuals to associate together for pur- 
poses of common profit and advantage. 

Such impulses are at bottom nothing more than 
the desire to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. The 
motive forces behind social instincts are those of 
pleasure and pain. The same is true of intellectual 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 75 

powers. In their essence they are the instruments 
by which we perceive and judge, compare and adapt, 
means to ends. We use these instruments because 
we desire to obtain things that will be of advantage, 
in other words, things that will be sources of pleasure 
and happiness, or will protect us against loss, harm 
and pain. 

Consequently pleasures and pains are the motive 
impulses behind social instincts and intellectual 
activities. 

Now the impulse behind our feeling about right is, 
that right ought to be done regardless of pleasure or 
pain. 

It was not to embrace a pleasure or avoid a pain 
that the Eurasian missionary kissed the leprous lips, 
and that Svetlogoub surrendered his fortune to the 
poor, and his neck to the hangman. 

The impulse here was a sense of loyalty to something 
to which they felt they owed allegiance. In obedience 
to this feeling, pleasures and pains, advantages and 
fears, were trampled underfoot. 

Is it not contrary to reason to draw from pleasures 
and pains impulses which totally ignore pleasures 
and pains? 

Again, we are assured that it is a waste of energy to 
seek the source of our moral sensibility elsewhere. 
The source is here in ourselves. It is the voice of 
my higher self admonishing my lower and more 
brutal self. 

Plausible but fallacious. The phrase higher self 
admonishing the lower self is misleading. There are 
not two individuals within my skin, one of them able 
to "boss" the other, as seems to be implied. Those 
who use the expression "higher self" admonishing the 



76 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

" lower self," mean probably, that, feeling right ought 
to.be done, I curb my lower impulses. 

What we desire to know, is, whence comes the feel- 
ing that I ought to curb my lower impulses, a feeling 
which I myself experience as an authoritative demand 
imposed on me? 

Since that which imposes authority cannot be the 
same as that on which the authority is imposed, the 
source of this authoritative feeling imposed on me 
cannot be in me but must be in something else. 

Obviously, one section of myself is incompetent to 
impose an authoritative obligation on another section. 
It requires a man to exact obedience from even the 
feeblest of his fellows, while this theory would have 
us suppose that in the moral life, the strongest and 
most self-reliant yield obedience to something that 
is only half a man. 

If not in our ordinary self, is it not possible the 
feeling has its source in that marvellous extension of 
ourselves revealed by modern psychology, and called 
the subconscious or transmarginal self? Is the feel- 
ing of ought due to "an explosion into the fields of 
ordinary consciousness of ideas elaborated outside of 
these fields, in subliminal regions of the mind?" 

Several difficulties stand in the way of this suppo- 
sition. Uprushes of the subconscious take place 
apparently, only under hysterical or at least abnormal 
conditions. The feeling of moral obligation, on the 
contrary, is in the strictest sense an experience of 
normality, always with us, part of our working every- 
day outfit. 

That a welling up of the subconscious should have 
something to do with the flashes of insight, and the 
moments of inspiration, of men of genius, as F. W. H. 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 77 

Myers held, appears reasonable enough, but that such 
uprushes are the same thing as the quiet, persistent 
whispers of the inward monitor, will be for most of 
us probably inconceivable. 

Again, both the uniformity and the universality of 
the sense of right make against the notion that its 
source is in the transmarginal region. These regions 
must be supposed to differ from each other as the indi- 
viduals to whom they belong differ. It is therefore not 
easy to see how they could give rise to an identical 
feeling, except in so far as they were acted upon by an 
identical agency beyond themselves. 

Furthermore, whatever be the character of the 
wider self in other respects, it is a part of me, a sub- 
merged tract of my personality. 

Since the feeling about right is of the nature of an 
authority laying an obligation upon me, and since 
the subliminal element is part of me, the authoritative 
obligation of righteousness, is authoritative for the 
subliminal, as for the rest of me, and as a conse- 
quence must have its source elsewhere than in the 
subject over which its sway is wielded. If this sub- 
liminal is not part of me, but is external to my totality 
of being, then the argument that the source of the 
feeling about right is in myself, because it is in this 
subliminal element, falls to the ground. 

To review what has been said. 

When we attempt to trace the feeling about right, 
the sense of ought, to its source, we are unable to 
find the source in prudential motives, or in social 
pressure or influence, nor is it the result of the growth 
of moral sensibility from lower forms of life. The 



78 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

magic of amalgamation is incompetent to produce 
morality out of non-moral ingredients, nor can it 
spring from our inner, or from our submerged, con- 
sciousness. Whence then does it spring? 

Since its origin is not to be discovered in those 
sections of our surroundings which are on a level 
with ourselves, namely, in human society or in our 
own consciousness, and since it does not issue from 
forms of life which are lower than ourselves, the indi- 
cations are that it comes from a source higher than 
ourselves. 

Consider once more the situation. A sense of 
obligation to do right is experienced by the whole 
of mankind, and experienced as an authority they are 
in duty bound to obey. 

Do not these facts suggest, to some extent at least, 
what the nature of its source must be? The feeling 
is, in the first place, common to all mankind, a uni- 
versal experience. In the second place, it is the same 
everywhere. Not unstable, desultory, but immutable, 
invariable, permanent. In the third place, it imposes 
itself upon us with authoritative power. It speaks 
to the soul with a sovereign voice. We acknowledge, 
and we cannot help acknowledging, that we ought to 
discharge our moral obligation. Try as we may, we 
are unable to rid ourselves of the consciousness of 
allegiance owed to right. 

Here then, is an immutable feeling imposing itself 
upon us with authority. Consequently, whencesoever 
it may come, it must be from some source higher than 
ourselves, for only that which is higher than, superior 
to, ourselves can be experienced by us as an authority. 
Furthermore, this feeling is experienced as an author- 
ity by the entire human race. Its source therefore, 



SOUL AND OVERSOUL 79 

must be above, higher than, superior to, the entire 
human race. 

It will scarcely be denied that whatever is above, 
higher than, superior to, all that is human, is super- 
human. From this the conclusion appears inevitable 
that the source of our feeling that right ought to be 
done is a superhuman source. " The moral law comes 
to us out of the infinite depths and heights. It is a 
voice that speaks to us out of the ultimate reality of 
things." 

An incredible doctrine, opposed to the whole trend 
of modern thought, it will be said. Yet the doctrine 
rests upon a fact imbedded in the very centre of our 
human nature. To refute the doctrine, either we 
must get rid of the fact, or find some other than a 
superhuman explanation. 

We cannot get rid of the fact. The feeling that 
right ought to be done is universal and ineradicable, 
part of the equipment of rational beings. Were we 
without the feeling, it would mark us as either less 
than, or more than, man. With regard to its explan- 
ation, our endeavor has been to show that none but 
a superhuman one meets the case. 

This being admitted, the final and momentous 
result at which we arrive, is, that since our feeling 
about right is a manifestation of the superhuman, and 
since its influence is exercised^ over the entire human 
race, therefore, the entire human race is actively and 
unremittingly influenced toward righteousness by a 
superhuman agency. By an agent of the Eternal both 
sage and savage are attended on their way. At every 
stage of the journey of life soul is in touch with Over- 
soul. 

From such contact may not streams of energy, may 



80 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

not fire from heaven be drawn? Experience shows 
that we are able to reduce the thread of connection 
with the superhuman almost to the vanishing point. 
Can we not also enlarge it, until the superhuman 
permeates our being? With the cooperation of these 
higher powers it should be possible for us to trans- 
form our lives. 






CHAPTER VI 

The Conduct of the Soul 

1. The SouVs Quest 

Surrounded by a world on the whole, immeasurably 
stronger than itself, the soul makes the amazing dis- 
covery that in some respects it is stronger than the 
world. 

"In the fell clutch of circumstance 

I have not winced nor cried aloud, 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody but unbowed. 

"It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate, 
I am the captain of my soul." 

The great and powerful universe can crush and kill 
us, but it cannot make us say "yes" if we decide to 
say "no." To a limited extent we are independent 
of the world. Within prescribed bounds we possess 
a real detachment and freedom, and are able to choose 
our own course. The ever pressing question is, how 
to choose? 

Instinctively, the soul chooses for its own benefit, 
uses its independence to seek its own good. 

We perceive in ourselves certain appetites and 
desires, impulses in a deep and true sense sacred, in 

81 



82 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

as much as they are rooted in the nature of things, 
in the divine order. These appetites and desires, 
for food, drink, warmth, companionship, admiration, 
possessions, power, love, beauty, etc., we seek to 
satisfy, and in their satisfaction we find our welfare, 
our pleasure, our happiness, our good. 

As John Stuart Mill writes: "To think of an 
object as desirable (unless for the sake of its con- 
sequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one 
and the same thing, and to desire anything except 
in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical 
and metaphysical impossibility." 

When we say, the soul seeks its own good, we mean 
then, that it seeks to fulfil its desires, finding in such 
fulfilment pleasure or happiness. This constitutes 
its good. The most rational view of the difference 
between pleasure and happiness appears to be that 
it is one of degree. If pleasure be represented by a 
single musical note, then, happiness is a number of 
notes sounding in harmony. We cannot perhaps 
define happiness. We do not need to define it. Every 
one knows what it is, and recognizes it as a desirable 
condition, as something good. Light on the point 
may be gained possibly, from the consideration that 
both happiness and the good are allied to worth. All 
good things we regard as of more or less worth. 
The worth of things lies wholly in their capacity to 
give pleasure or happiness. Rubies and diamonds are 
precious, are of worth, only because they contribute 
to this end. Did rubies and diamonds give us pain 
instead of pleasure, their price would drop to zero. 
Different things have different rates of worth for 
different people, but in every instance the thing's 
worth consists in the amount of pleasure or happi- 
ness it gives. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 83 

Since good is equivalent to worth, and since happi- 
ness is also equivalent to worth, and since things that 
are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, 
therefore, what we call the good, and what we call 
happiness, are equivalent. 

The good is thus identical with happiness. The 
highest good is that which promotes in the highest 
degree the happiness of all. 

Some have said that the highest good is perfection, 
but of what avail is perfection without happiness? 
Others have regarded character as the highest good, 
yet of what worth would character be, if it produced 
nothing but misery? We value character because 
we believe that through it may be obtained the oppo- 
site of misery. Are there not forms of happiness 
which instead of being good, are evil? Those of the 
drunkard and the libertine, for example? In such 
instances, it is not the pleasure or happiness that is 
evil, the evil element is the pain caused to others, 
and ultimately to ourselves, by drunkenness and 
immorality. In using its independence to seek its 
own good, the soul seeks happiness. For no other end 
is it in the least worth striving. 



2. The SouVs Dilemma 

Thus, the path seems plain and clear. Not far, 
however, do we travel along the way of life, before 
the pursuit of pleasure receives a check. The soul 
finds itself compelled to pause, and think, and ques- 
tion. Potent as the impulses of appetite and desire 
are, the soul is not the slave of these impulses. If it 
choose to do so, it can refuse to yield to them, and 
in certain instances it knows it ought to refuse. It 



84 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

is aware of a peculiar sensation that, in certain 
instances, not pleasure, but right, should be our 
aim. 

The source and significance of this, the central fact 
of our experience, has been discussed in a previous 
chapter. The feeling that right ought to be done 
was there shown to be acknowledged as authoritative 
by the whole human race. Every one will agree that 
right has to do with the good. We ought to do right 
means we ought to do what is good, in other words, 
w T hat promotes happiness. Hence the feeling about 
right and the instincts of the soul point in the same 
direction, namely, toward happiness. Conflict comes, 
only where there is an option between different 
happinesses. Every one will agree further, that the 
feeling we ought to do what is good, means, we ought 
to do what is good always . and everywhere, and 
to the utmost of our ability. The only limit the moral 
sense recognizes is the limit of capacity. Do all the 
good you can, is the criterion. When therefore, we 
are confronted by alternatives both good, evidently, 
we ought to take the course promoting the greater 
good. How are we to know the greater good? We 
are endowed with no infallible instrument of dis- 
crimination. The feeling about right is no such in- 
strument. It begins and ends in a sense that right 
ought to be done, that we are in duty bound to do 
it. As to which is the right, the greater good, on any 
particular occasion, it gives no indication. 

We ourselves must use our wits and exercise our 
intelligence. The course we judge and believe to be 
for the greater good, is for us, the right, and that 
course the sense of moral obligation bids us pursue. 
We may be mistaken. Correct judgment depends 
chiefly on the amount of our knowledge, and this 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 85 

depends on education. Against error, education is 
the only safeguard. 

The direction we take, in our endeavor to obey 
the feeling about right, thus hinges on our possibly 
mistaken judgment. There is no help for this. We 
have to run the risk. Our line of action may not be 
that which in reality makes for the larger volume of 
good or happiness, and later on we may suffer from 
the consequences of our error, but the suffering will 
be of the kind that follows an error, not of the kind 
that follows a moral wrong, a sin. If we have adopted 
the plan of action which to the best of our judgment 
and belief was for the right, then, however foolish our 
conduct from a practical point of view, and however 
unfortunate the outcome, our conscience will be 
clear. 

In many, perhaps in the majority of situations, no 
effort is required on our part to decide which the 
greater good is. If the question be of my own good 
and that of the community, clearly, the greater good 
lies in the direction of the community. If the issue 
be between myself and another individual, the greater 
good will be promoted by sharing my good with him, 
for the obvious reason that the good of two is greater 
than that of one. In such examples the issue may be 
read by him who runs. Other situations present 
difficulties, for example: 

Two passengers from a torpedoed liner are clinging 
to a plank. One of them is a ship's stoker, the other 
a young doctor, a specialist in childrens' diseases, 
with important achievements in research work to his 
credit, and a brilliant career opening before him. He 
sees that the plank cannot support two. One of them 
must seek safety elsewhere, if the other is to survive. 
Which is it to be? The stoker is the older and the 



86 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

weaker man, but at all costs he wants to live, and 
clings desperately to the plank. In the doctor's mind 
a strife, an agitation, takes place. Carefully trained, 
highly educated, is he not worth more to the world 
than a common coal shoveller? Yet this coal shoveller 
may be the father of a family, have many attached 
friends, be a valuable citizen. After a few moments 
the young physician quietly lets go his hold, swims 
away, and overcome with cold and exhaustion, 
presently sinks. During the next half hour the stoker 
is rescued by a passing boat. , 

In this instance, the question was not of sharing, 
but of surrendering, happiness. Did the young 
doctor make a mistake. Would he have promoted 
the larger happiness by preserving his own life, and 
shaking the other fellow off? Science and philosophy 
may reply, 'yes, the man was a- fool.' As the crackling 
of sticks, will such an answer seem to many of us. 
The man could not indeed be certain the course he 
took would secure the larger happiness, but the course 
he took makes us certain that the larger happiness 
was his pure untainted aim. Sure of this we, 
revere him as a hero, and our hearts offer him their 
homage. 

When a conflict arises between our own good and 
that of other people, our moral sense bids us make 
for what we believe to be the larger good, even at 
cost to ourselves, even though such a course involve 
the surrender of the whole of our own good. 



'When joy and duty clash 
Then joy must go to smash.' 



is the sum and substance of the ethical law. Obedi- 
ence to the ethical law; that is, to the mandate the 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 87 

feeling about right lays upon our heart, is what is 
meant by moral goodness. Moral excellence con- 
sists in willingness to endure loss and pain ourselves, 
for the sake of promoting the good; that is, the 
happiness, of others. 

When the "Titanic" struck the iceberg, the men 
remained on board and went down with the ship, 
in order that there might be room for the women and 
children in the boats. The deed was morally excel- 
lent, and the men were moral heroes, because out of 
loyalty to their sense of right they voluntarily endured 
pain themselves, in order to secure good, or happiness, 
for others. They deliberately chose the course of 
action which they believed promoted the larger 
amount of good, although, they themselves suffered 
in consequence. 

The ineradicable conviction of mankind is, that 
although those who sacrifice themselves for others 
seem to incur defeat and total loss, there is somehow, 
in spite of appearances to the contrary, instead of 
defeat, victory, instead of loss, gain. 

An inkling of the truth at the bottom of this con- 
viction may be obtained, perhaps, from the con- 
sideration that if all things be related, then all souls 
are related, soul life with soul life, and the whole with 
the common source of life. Such being the case, is 
it not imaginable that selfishness reduces the links 
of relationship and thereby tends to isolate the soul, 
and correspondingly to weaken it, while on the other 
hand, unselfishness adds to those links, in this way 
bringing the soul's individual life into closer touch 
with the universal life? Would not this be likely 
to result in an increase of the power and vitality of 
the individual, far outweighing the loss incurred 
through self sacrifice? 



88 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Evidence exists which supports this idea. 

The case of Charles Lamb, for instance. For the 
sake of his poor mad sister, Lamb sacrificed at the 
outset of his career ease and comfort, prospects of 
marriage, and opportunities of devoting himself to 
study; surrendered, in fact, about all that for most of 
us makes life worth living. Nevertheless, it would 
appear that out of his surrender of good came an 
increase of good. Before this time, he tells us, he 
himself had had at least one attack of the insanity 
which was hereditary in his family. After this 
renunciation for the sake of a fellow creature, the 
tendency to mental unsoundness entirely, disappeared, 
his mental nature seemed quickened, his imagination 
strengthened. "With me," he wrote, "the former 
things are passed away. I have something more to 
do now than to feel." 

Writing from the battle-fields of France and Flan- 
ders, an American newspaper correspondent declared, 
"In scores of instances I have been with men in their 
dying moments, men who have laid down their lives 
for their country, and in every instance their minds 
were serenely content. On their faces was an ex- 
pression of radiant happiness." 

Always, the saints have counted it not loss but gain 
to suffer in the cause of justice and mercy. 

3. The Easier Way. 

Admirable though the course described may be, it is 
not a necessary course. There is an alternative. It 
is possible to ignore the feeling about right, refuse to 
incur loss and pain at the call of duty, and turn instead 
to seek our own happiness without consideration for 
others. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 89 

Strong tendencies urge us in that direction. Look 
out for number one, everybody for himself, is the 
easier way. Why should not the soul choose the 
easier way? Were we as the creatures of the jungle 
and the poultry yard, this would be our proper course. 
It is not our proper course only because we are not 
as the creatures of the jungle and the poultry yard. 
We possess a quality of which they are destitute. 
In addition to their animal instincts we have an 
instinct that is not animal, something much more 
than an instinct, a feeling unique and extraordinary 
about right. A feeling that bids us on certain occa- 
sions shape our conduct by other than animal motives, 
by motives of unselfishness, of altruism. 

But to shape our conduct after this fashion is irk- 
some. Why not yield to the pleasant beast-of-the- 
field impulses, and seek after our own safety, and com- 
fort, and wellbeing? Often enough this seems the 
natural, the common sense thing to do. Ordinarily, 
it is also the right thing to do. It becomes wrong only 
when our welfare conflicts with the welfare of others. 
It is wrong under these circumstances only because 
we know a higher, if a harder, way. Yet not by heroes 
are those blamed who shrink from the supreme sac- 
rifice. The trouble is, evasion of sacrifice brings no 
satisfying results. We are not made happier thereby, 
but the contrary. 

Alluring, pleasant, desirable though the way of 
selfishness appear, it is the way of folly as well as of 
moral wrong. Always the quest for joy through 
selfishness is a failure. The price paid outweighs the 
joy gained. Selfishness, sin, (sin is nothing but sel- 
fishness,) leads to misery, never to anything else, for 
as was before shown, the feeling about right is the 
expression in our humanity of the governing goodness 



90 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

of the universe. The obligation laid upon us by the 
moral sense is thus no mere human ordinance, or 
man made rule and law, but a summons from the 
Eternal. When, therefore, the soul sets itself in oppo- 
sition to the sense of moral obligation, it is setting itself 
in opposition to a power omnipotent, invincible, and 
in the end, irresistible. 

For a time opposition may be maintained, but the 
final and certain outcome is defeat. Defeat signifies 
the necessity of conforming to the will of the conqueror. 
Since in this case the conqueror is the supreme power 
of righteousness, to righteousness the defeated must 
ultimately conform. The soul which has accustomed 
itself to evil will be obliged both to accustom itself to 
good, and so radically to change its own inner nature 
as to acquire a desire for the good, a hunger and thirst 
after righteousness. Clearly, the preliminary step in 
such a process must be a contrite acknowledgment of 
guilt and error. Not until conviction on this point 
has been reached will any genuine rearrangement of 
ideas concerning good and evil be possible. Even 
when this valley of humilation has been traversed, 
the soul will find itself no more than at the beginning 
of the way. Painful will it be, for the only exit from 
the valley of humiliation, is through the door of repar- 
ation and atonement. When the prodigal, in the 
parable, returned home, was it not to take up, after 
the interlude of the fatted calf, the hard drudgery of 
a hired servant? 

On the other hand, while obedience to duty results 
often in painful experiences, these are incidental. We 
have seen that the summons comes from the super- 
human, from the heights of the Eternal, from the power 
which is a power of perfect life. It is therefore toward 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 91 

perfection of life that we are called, and perfection of 
life means happiness. 

Through obedience, the soul not only sets its face 
toward ultimate happiness, but at once enters into 
alliance with the Eternal, comes into accord with the 
Most High, links soul with Oversoul, establishing 
thereby an inflow of what must prove in the long run, 
transforming vitality and strength. 

That way salvation lies, for though the path lead 
up many a steep *hill and down many a dark ravine, 
the trail is blazed by the axe of God, and each step 
brings us nearer to that state in which suffering is 
outgrown because imperfection is outgrown. 

4. Practical Consequences. 

The business of the soul, it has been said, is to 
make for happiness, with the single condition that 
when there is a choice between alternative courses 
of action, the soul shall choose that which to the best 
of its belief promotes the larger amount of happiness, 
even at cost of its own. 

How would this work out in practice? If this 
principle were acknowledged as the supreme rule of 
life, how, for example, would it affect the use of force? 
It would limit the use of force to protection and 
defence. But, if I am sure that Jiiy system of govern- 
ment, or my method of social organization, or my 
doctrines of religion, promote the largest amount of 
happiness, am I not justified in compelling their 
acceptance by other people? I have no such justi- 
fication, for it must be remembered that other people 
may be equally sure that some different kind of 
government, or social system, or religion, makes for 
the largest happiness. Consequently, however con- 



92 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

fident I may be that I possess the truth, so long as I 
acknowledge each man's right to do what he believes 
to be right, it can never be my right to force my truth 
on another man. Had the Spanish Inquisitors recog- 
nized this principle, there would have been no In- 
quisition. Had the Protestants recognized it, there 
would have been no hanging of Papists. If every one 
did what he believed to be right, and permitted the 
same privilege to his neighbor, and if every one con- 
ceded that for every one the right course is to pro- 
mote the largest amount of happiness in sight, not 
only should we make an end of tyranny and intoler- 
ance, but peace and good will would be assured. 

How would the establishment of this principle 
affect the individual citizen? It would foster and 
develop the individual through fellowship with other 
individuals. Were this principle the rule of life, no 
one would seek his own happiness regardless of his 
neighbors, for the happiness of no individual, taken 
by itself, can ever be the largest in sight. I must, if 
I follow out this principle, seek always the happiness 
of others in addition to my own, and sometimes to 
the loss of my own, and others, in their turn, must in 
addition to their own, and sometimes at the cost of 
their own, seek also my happiness. 

Were we always busy promoting the happiness of 
our neighbors, and were our neighbors equally busy 
promoting ours, all the world would be happy, sel- 
fishness would be eliminated, and sin would cease. 
The ideal of socialism, each for all and all for each, 
would be attained without the burden of a rigid 
socialistic system. 

Since the one thing we desire of other people is 
that they promote our happiness, when we seek to 
promote theirs, we are doing to them what we would 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 93 

have them do to us. By putting our principle into 
practice, therefore, we establish the golden rule as 
the universal law of life. 

With the golden rule accepted universally, errors of 
judgment would be the only remaining sources of 
discord. For errors of judgment, more knowledge, 
more enlightenment, are the remedies, and these it 
may well be the care of society to impart. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Destiny of the Soul 

What of the future? What of the destiny of the soul? 

LIFE is the desired destiny. 

i 

Instinct whispers that with a sufficiency of life, 
the rest will take care of itself. 

Sometimes we cry out against life and question its 
worth, but in our calmer moments we recognize these 
despairing moods to be the aberrations of a mind 
unhinged by pain. When we come to ourselves we 
perceive that what we need is more, not less of life. 

Our woes are due to the defects, to the imperfec- 
tions, of existence, and these imperfections are the 
result of the meagreness of the measure of existence 
that is ours. 

The current of our vitality runs low. It is like a 
trickling stream finding its way with difficulty among 
the boulders, each pebble a hindrance. A few weeks 
later boulder and pebble have disappeared. Every 
obstacle is overcome and the change is wrought not 
by removing the obstacles but by adding to the 
volume of the stream. 

So from our troubles deliverance is to be found 
through an increase in the volume of our vitality. 
Give us vitality enough and our infirmities will 
vanish. 

' " Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
No life that breathes with human breath 
94 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 95 

Has ever truly longed for death. 
'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh life not death for which we pant 
More life and fuller that we want. 

Few probably formulate the desire to themselves. 
It lies nevertheless an ineradicable instinct in the 
depths of being. The endeavor after success, achieve- 
ment, wealth, amusement, what are these but expres- 
sions of the passion for larger, richer, more potent, 
vitality. The passion is justified, it is in accord with 
the order of things. The physical world is pervaded 
by a movement of development and the general direc- 
tion of development appears to be from less to more 
life. 

That this is the case with individuals is beyond 
question. No individual remains stationary. Every 
man makes some advance during his earthly journey. 
The saying of Job " naked came I out of my mother's 
womb and naked shall I return thither' ' must not 
blind us to the truth that mentally a man is very 
far indeed from being as naked when he leaves the 
world as when he enters it. 

In every instance even the most degraded savage 
achieves some mental gain, adding thereby, to the 
volume of his life. Is it not to life also that we are 
called by the sense of moral obligation? He who 
loses his life in the cause of justice and mercy, we 
have been told, shall find it again, enriched, enlarged. 

The desire of the soul is therefore one and the same 
with the end toward which all animated nature moves. 
A happy augury that the desire will be satisfied. 

But a shadow falls across the dial, the dark shadow 
of death. What does it portend? Is the "fell ser- 
geant's strict arrest," the final cessation of con- 
sciousness? In appearance, at least, the soul's life 



96 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

is extinguished, can it be so in reality? Plainly 
enough, death means the end of the body. We see 
incurable decay breaking down the substance of 
tissue and bone until the whole is dissolved into dust. 
But what of the soul? Wistfully our hearts ask, is 
there reasonable ground for thinking the inward self 
survives the shock of dissolution and passes in safety 
the peril of the grave? 

An affirmative answer may be given without hesita- 
tion. There is very good ground for believing that, 
as regards the soul, death is an emancipator > rather 
than a destroyer. There is a weighty volume of evi- 
dence in favor of the soul's continued existence. 



Continued existence is suggested by the indestructible 
nature of the soul. 

We know that it is made of different stuff from the 
body. As a consequence, it is not likely to be subject 
to the forces of destruction which prey upon the body. 
The whole of the material universe is in the grip of a 
subtle, unceasing, irresistible, power of disintegration. 
Wise men tell us the world itself is growing old and is 
slowly but surely moving toward a point of time when 
all heat having passed off, it will crumble down and 
finally dissolve into that impalpable cosmic dust out 
of which it was originally formed. 

Insignificance is no protection. These relentless 
agencies are busy alike with the world and with the 
tiny specks of matter floating in a sunbeam. 

Vast as the power of disintegration is, it is capable 
of working in but one way. Its activities are con- 
fined within the limits of a single process. Be it a 
rock, or a wall, or a tree, or a corpse, whether the 
operating agency be water, or frost, or wind, or fire, 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 97 

whether destruction be instantaneous, or gradual, 
sudden, or by slow degrees, the end is in every case 
accomplished by the same means. 

Call it decay, or dissolution, or death, the method is 
identical. The forces of disintegration work by rend- 
ing assunder, by pulling apart, the groups and frag- 
ments of groups of infinitely minute particles which 
constitute the substance of all material things, thus 
utterly destroying the object, the thing, whch was 
composed of those particles. 

How is it with the thinking mind, the living and 
conscious soul? As we have seen it does not consist, 
like flesh and muscle, of groups or bunches of particles. 
In what manner, then, can the forces of dissolution 
lay hold of it? These forces destroy, by rending 
assunder the material of which their victim is fashioned, 
but here there is no material. They achieve their 
mission by tearing apart the particles, the atoms, 
which form the substance of their prey, but here 
there are no atoms. They work only in one way, and 
here they have nothing to work upon. They cannot 
break in pieces that which is not made of breakable 
stuff. They cannot separate the inseparable. 

In presence of the inward mental self, the agencies 
of dissolution are impotent. By the molecular, the 
nonmolecular is unassailable. Its destructive forces 
can find no point at which to deliver their attack. 
The probability is, therefore, that no attack will be 
delivered, and that the inward mental self, the soul, 
will survive the last adventure, unaffected by the 
processes of bodily decay. 

Continued existence is foreshadowed by pre -existence. 

Since the inward mental self is made of different 
stuff, it is not a product of the body, but must be the 



98 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

product of something else, in the sense that electric- 
ity is not a product of the metal it magnetizes, but is 
a product of something else. Being a product of 
something else it existed somewhere else prior to its 
junction with the metal it magnetizes. 

Is not this likely to be the case also with the inward 
mental self? Whatever the process, whether gradual 
or instantaneous, by which the soul was brought into 
being since it is made of other than bodily material 
the agencies which brought it into being were other 
than bodily agencies. > 

Consequently, there must have been, one would 
think, a moment before soul-germ and body-germ, 
before the embryonic consciousness and the embryonic 
material principle entered into association, a moment 
when they existed independently. 

If the soul existed independently before its associa- 
tion with the body began, its ability to exist indepen- 
dently after that association is brought to an end is 
at least a reasonable supposition, with the difference 
that this further existence will be no longer that of a 
mere sack of possibilities, but of an individualized 
being, equipped with faculties drawn forth and devel- 
oped by its earthly experiences. 

Continued existence is probable because the soul is a 
producer of energy. 

The soul is a producer of energy for the reason that 
it causes things to happen. 

My hat is hanging on the peg. I take it down. 
With regard to the hat, a change has occurred, and I 
am the author of the change. 

This illustrates what is meant by causing things to 
happen. We mean that we produce change of some 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 99 

kind. The change thus produced is called an effect. 
The changes I am able to produce are countless in 
number and endless in variety. Yet, they are all 
brought about in the same way. In every case I 
exert myself. By this I mean that I employ a cer- 
tain amount of force, put forth a certain amount of 
energy. There may be much or little, it may be 
emitted spontaneously, or employed with care and 
deliberation, but, always, when I produce change, I 
put forth a certain amount of force, energy, momen- 
tum, mental or physical. In causing things to happen, 
I exercise originating power. 

Few of us, probably, question the truth of this. It is 
accepted as a self-evident fact, almost universally. 
Instinctively, we take it for granted, and experience 
bears us out. By some writers, however, it is disputed. 

We deceive ourselves, they tell us. W*e seem to 
cause things, but it is pure illusion. In reality, we 
do nothing of the sort. The energy displayed is not 
our energy, but that of the universe passing through 
us as the electric current passes through the wire. 
Our part is that of the wire. 

We are mere machines, automata, without the 
faintest trace of originating power. We contribute 
no more to the outcome of life than the aeolian harp 
contributes to the music which the winds of heaven 
call forth as they blow over its strings. 

This is the doctrine of " determinism,' ' and it has 
much in its favor. It is symmetrical, can be dealt with 
on exact and mathematical lines, adapts itself to the 
scientific scheme of things, and fits into the rigid 
natural order. 

Still, plausible though it be, it will not stand the 
test, which demands that a theory shall explain all 
the facts. Determinism fails to explain all the facts. 



100 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

It fails to give any rational account of the existence 
of the feeling itself, of how it is that the fundamental 
instincts of the race impel us to regard ourselves as 
possessing a real power of initiative, or of causation. 
The determinist says there is no ground for such a 
notion. How then, could it have established itself 
so firmly? 

Common sense affirms doggedly and obstinately, 
that these instincts are sound, and that within certain 
limits we can actually put forth power or energy, and 
so cause things to happen. , 

As proof of this, common sense points to the fact 
that we are able to overcome obstacles. 

In an article entitled "The Forest," (Outlook, 
June 13, 1903), S. E. White describes the difficulty 
of carrying camp equipage. 

"The first time I did any packing, I had a hard 
time stumbling a few hundred feet with just fifty 
pounds on my back. By the end of the same trip I 
could carry a hundred pounds and a lot of miscel- 
laneous traps like canoe poles, and guns, without 
serious inconvenience, and over a long portage. But 
at the start packing is as near infernal punishment 
as mundane conditions can compass. Sixteen brand 
new muscles ache at first dully, then sharply, then 
intolerably, until it seems you cannot bear it another 
second. You are unable to keep your feet. A stagger 
means an effort at recovery, and an effort at recovery 
means that you trip when you place your feet, and 
that means, if you are lucky enough not to be thrown, 
an extra tweak for every one of the sixteen new mus- 
cles. At first you rest every time you feel tired. Then 
you begin to feel tired every fifty feet. Then you 
have to do the best you can, and prove the pluck 
that is in you. 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 101 

Mr. Tom Friant, an old woodsman of wide experi- 
ence, has often told me with relish of his first try at 
carrying. He had about sixty pounds and his com- 
panion double that amount. Mr. Friant stood it for 
a few hundred yards and then sat down. He could 
not have moved another step if a gun had been at 
his ear. 

" What's the matter?" asked his companion. 

"Dell," said Friant, "I'm all in. I can't navigate. 
Here's where I quit." 

"Can't you carry her any further?" 

"Not an inch." 

"Well pile her on, I'll carry her for you." 

Friant looked at him for a moment in silent amaze- 
ment. "Do you mean to say you are going to carry 
your pack and mine too?" 

"That's what I mean to say. I'll do it if I have 
to." 

Friant drew a long breath. 

"Well," said he at last, "If a little sawed off cuss 
like you can wiggle under a hundred and eighty, I 
guess I can make it under sixty." 

"That's right," said Dell imperturbably, "If you 
think you can, you can." 

"And I did," ends Friant with a chuckle. 

Therein lies the whole secret. The work is irksome, 
sometimes even painful, but if you think you can do 
it, you can, for though great is the protest of the 
human frame against what it considers abuse, greater 
is the power of a man's grit." 

Is it imaginable that any influence in heaven or 
on earth could shake the conviction of a man so 
situated, that energy was contributed, and that he 
himself was the contributor? 

But the proof of proofs, the decisive testimony that 



102 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

we do really contribute the energy which causes 
things to happen, is the evidence afforded by our 
moral experiences. 

Everyone feels that he ought to do right. The 
sensation is not of compulsion, but of persuasion. As 
we are under no necessity to do right, so we are under 
no necessity to do wrong. We can always decline to 
do it if we try hard enough. We are in every case 
masters of the situation. 

Nothing in the whole range of human life is more 
certain than that, in moral decisions, he who makes 
the decision does so in very truth, the action has its 
root and beginning in him. 

In spite of ourselves, we hold him responsible, and 
give him the credit or the blame. In our innermost 
souls we cannot help believing that it really was he 
who lifted the latch, and opened the door, and sent 
the impulse out upon its errand of mercy or the 
contrary, that it really was he who, exercising his 
prerogative of free judgment, decided nobly or basely. 

When we are brought into contact with brave deeds 
we greet them not with the coldly judicial approval 
we should bestow on a smoothly working piece of 
clockwork, but with an enthusiastic reverence and 
admiration, called forth by an instinctive conviction 
that the merit of the deed belongs to the brave man 
and not to some ulterior power w x orking through him. 

Nothing can really persuade us that the hero of the 
following incident was a mere machine acting under 
mechanical compulsion. On the contrary, we simply 
cannot help regarding him as a being before whose 
masterful will nature herself was powerless. 

The troops holding the farmhouse of Huguemont, 
on the field of Waterloo, were short of ammunition. 
Two wagon loads were despatched to supply the 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 103 

need. Approaching the place, they found the sur- 
rounding hedge on fire. 

Without considering the danger, the driver of the 
first wagon lashed his terrified and struggling horses 
through the burning heap, but the flames catching 
the powder, it exploded, and in an instant shattered 
man, horses, and wagon into ten thousand fragments. 

The second driver paused, appalled by his com- 
rade's fate. Every instinct of the natural man urged 
him to the rear. Then the conquering power of the 
soul asserted itself. Observing that the flames were 
beaten back a moment by the explosion, and that 
this gave him one desperate chance, he crushed down 
his fears, and sending his horses at the smouldering 
breach, amid the deafening cheers of the garrison, 
landed his perilous cargo safely within, while the 
flames rose behind him with redoubled fury. 

Can any one believe that a deed like this was done 
without the expenditure of energy, or that the hero 
himself was not the source of the energy expended? 

If the heroes we revere were the instruments of 
necessity, if they were like the phenomena of nature, 
and did what they did by the force of gravitation, or 
by chemical cohesion, or by the rigid laws of mechan- 
ical motion, we should no more offer them our homage, 
or acknowledge them as meritorious, than we should 
the winds and waves and falling rain. How absurd to 
pay homage to a steam engine, or to offer our allegi- 
ance to a telephone, yet it would be not one whit more 
absurd than to do so to a hero who was heroic merely 
through the force of circumstances, or the pressure of 
inherited tendencies. In our hearts we are assured 
that those who rouse our enthusiasm by self-sacrificing 
courage are not the slaves of circumstance and tend- 
ency, but that the force, impulse, initiative power, 



104 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

energy, which achieved the heroic deeds, came from 
and originated in these people. 

Consider again, what takes place when, instead of 
rising to our moral obligations, we beat a retreat and 
fail to meet them. In order to save ourselves trouble, 
or to escape a disagreeable experience, we shirk our 
duty, and depart from the straight path of honor. As 
a consequence, we are haunted by a peculiar sensa- 
tion. The feeling is something more than vexation, 
or irritation. It is an inward sense of unworthiness, 
accompanied by a passionate desire to return to the 
straight path and to undo what has been done, and 
make atonement. This peculiar sensation is what is 
meant by contrition, or remorse 

We are aware that we have done something we need 
not have done, and ought not to have done, and for 
which, therefore, we are to blame, and are culpably 
responsible. 

Now such a feeling, like everything in the universe, 
must have an adequate cause, and this cannot be 
found in the impulse of necessity. If we had been 
compelled of necessity to do what we did, if there had 
been no help for it, if we had had no choice, and had 
exercised no initiative, that is to say, if the energy 
which produced the result had its source not in us, 
but in some power beyond us, working through us as 
its instrument, then, we should not be the real doers 
of the deed, we should not be responsible for it. In 
that case there would have been nothing out of which 
a feeling of remorse could grow. Contrition would 
have been not only beside the mark, it never could 
have come into existence. The fact that we do actually 
have such a feeling is proof that we accmplished that 
which alone can produce such a feeling, namely, an 
act of which we are the actual source and origin, and 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 105 

for which, in consequence, we are genuinely respon- 
sible. 

When I have borne false witness against my neigh- 
bor, or have taken away my friend's good name, a 
knowledge of my share in the misery produced flames 
up within, and sears my heart with an awareness of 
responsibility for a shameful wrong. Outwardly, I 
may deny my guilt. I may deceive my fellow men. 
I find it an impossibility to deceive myself. Notwith- 
standing the sophistries with which I strive to weave 
a veil before my inward eye, the glaring truth cannot 
be hid. I know that I did this thing, with a knowledge 
that is forced upon me. In my heart I am perfectly 
well aware that my causal efficacy is a fact. 

Would Othello have admitted any connection be- 
tween his passionate will and the corpse upon the bed, 
if he could have helped it? He stood self-convicted 
by the sudden uprising of an overwhelming con- 
sciousness of guilt. He knew what had been his in- 
tention, that from his intention issued the energy 
which did the fatal work, was brought home to him, 
not so much by the sight of the waxen features and the 
glazed eye, (if these had been all, such is the constitu- 
tion of the human mind, he might have argued himself 
out of it, have persuaded himself it was not through 
him she died,) but by an accusing sense of sin, from 
which there was no escape. Would he have slit his 
throat if he had been able to convince himself that 
Desdemona's corpse was merely a circumstance con- 
comitant with his presence in the room? He knew 
himself the cause, and in a frenzy of remorse thrust 
the dagger home. 

Although I may have no immediate knowledge of 
the various links that connect the resolution in my 
mind with the subsequent movement in my muscles, 



106 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

in moral situations I have immediate knowledge of 
my causal responsibility. I am compelled to recog- 
nize that from me, and from nowhere else, issued the 
energy which produced the effect. My responsibility 
in the case is one of those things that cannot be other- 
wise. 

Thus, the consciousness of causality, the conscious- 
ness that we are responsible sources of energy, aroused 
by the putting forth of effort to overcome obstacles, 
is reenforced by our moral experiences. It is no longer 
a probably sound conclusion, it becomes irresistible 
truth from which we cannot get away. 

Doubtless a considerable, perhaps the greater part 
of our activities, is predetermined. Heredity and 
environment help or hinder, make it easier or harder 
to exercise our prerogative aright. All we affirm is 
that they do not monopolize the field, that there are 
still many occasions, and these the most vital, when to 
us alone, belongs the privilege of imparting the initial 
impulse. In such instances, the impulse, the energy, 
which achieves the effect, comes from me, from my 
mind or soul, with the result, that in such instances, 
my soul is something more than a medium through 
which energy passes, it is a source of energy, no mere 
storage battery, but a power-house, a genuine energy 
producer. 

How is this extraordinary fact to be interpreted? 
It cannot be fully interpreted. The heart and core of 
the matter is beyond us, as Spencer would say, " un- 
knowable/ f nevertheless, we may discern certain of 
its implications. 

1. Since we are producers of energy, and since the 
universe is a product of energy, we produce that which 
produces the universe. Our productivity is a factor 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 107 

in the work of creation. We are among the artificers 
of nature. We contribute to the general output. 

Our contribution possesses a peculiar quality. 
Nothing is more certain than that every individual is 
different from every other individual. Each human 
soul is unique. Consequently, its contribution to the 
general output is unique. 

Uniqueness means that of which there is only one. 
It cannot be replaced. Its loss is irreparable. Each 
soul's contribution being unique, and its loss, in con- 
sequence, irreparable, the weight of probability is 
against the occurrence of such loss. 

In the case of the contribution of the soul, the loss 
perhaps, is so insignificant that its irreparableness 
matters nothing. In a masterpiece, — and surely the 
universe is a masterpiece,— no part can be regarded 
as insignificant. Every line, tint, bar, phrase, word, 
is vital. In the u Ode on a Grecian Urn," for example, 
each syllable contributes a unique element, not one 
can be changed without injuring the whole. 

So, it seems reasonable to believe, is each soul 
essential to the masterpiece of the kosmic artist. 

Moreover, may it not be that the soul's con- 
tribution is of greater importance than we have 
imagined? 

While the individual is a minute speck, a microscopic 
atom, each individual seems to be endowed with 
potentialities which so far as can be seen are limitless, 
with capacities susceptible of measureless expansion 
and development. 

The tiny spring welling up among the stones on the 
hill side has in it the promise of a mighty river. The 
indications are that so it is with the soul of man. 
Give it time enough, and there is scarcely anything of 
which it may not become capable. 



108 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

To lose even a single soul, therefore, is to lose not 
only a unique power, one that cannot be replaced or 
reproduced, but a power of infinite possibilities. It 
seems unlikely that such forfeiture of possibilities 
will be permitted. 

2. Since we are producers of energy, the amount of 
energy in the universe will depend, in some degree at 
least, on our productivity. Were we to be destroyed, 
the energy of the universe would be, by the amount of 
our productivity, reduced. But, we are told that 
according to the law of conservation, the total of 
energy in the universe is constant, always the same. 
This being so, the destruction of even a single soul 
would break the law, and upset the balance. Con- 
sequently, it is probable that not even a single soul 
will be destroyed. 

Continued existence is indicated by the analogy of nature. 

"That which thou sowest is not quickened except 
it die," expresses a principle of universal application 
in the realm of nature. There, death is invariably 
the basis of life, the antecedent of some new form of 
vitality. 

A winter silence falls on stream and wood. Murmur 
of water, rustle of leaves, insect's hum, footfall of 
prowling beast, splash of leaping fish, are hushed. 
Nature is benumbed. In the grip of an iron frost the 
world lies dead. 

Yet even as it dies, a change begins. Round about 
the tree roots, and beneath the surface, everywhere, 
an invisible activity is set going, energy is stored up, 
the first steps are taken in the process of converting 
lifeless into living matter. 

Presently the snow melts, the icy seal is broken, the 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 109 

brown of hill and dale gives place to green, the trees 
burst into bud, the air vibrates with song, hibernating 
creatures awake, the drone of bees is heard. From the 
death of winter issues the life of spring. 

As with the succession of the seasons so with the 
evolution of living forms. Every stage of the evolu- 
tionary process is rooted in death. The genesis of 
every species had its rise in the destruction of some 
preceding species. In turn this new breed dwindles, 
and grows less, and dies, only to usher in more highly 
organized varieties. 

Passing from the history of general movements to 
that of individuals, we find the same predominating 
principle of life out of death. 

The seed disintegrates before the young shoot 
appears, first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
grain in the ear. The egg is destroyed that the chick 
may be hatched. Soon the chick vanishes, and out 
of its decease, issues the mature bird. 

The most striking instance is the progressive trans- 
formation known to naturalists as metamorphosis, 
occurring in the insect world. By a series of deaths 
is brought about a series of changes into new forms of 
life. 

The milkweed butterfly lays its eggs on milkweed 
leaves. After an existence of three or four days the 
eggs are destroyed and out of their destruction is 
hatched a wormlike object, greenish yellow, ringed 
with black, furnished with eight pairs of legs, and pow- 
erful jaws. It eats voraciously and grows rapidly. 
Its outer covering then dies, hardens, cracks, and from 
the ruin issues a larger worm. After a brief interval 
there is another death and another shedding of the out- 
worn shell. Again the process is repeated. Yet once 
more the outer covering hardens, but now there is no 



110 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

breaking forth of a new and larger caterpillar. This 
time death overtakes both the covering and the cov- 
ered. The active wormlike crawling thing is still. His 
skin has become his coffin. In place of the living cater- 
pillar there is nothing but an apparently lifeless 
chrysalis. The caterpillar is actually dead. He is 
never seen again. His death however proves to be 
the basis of life, for as we know, from the quiescent 
chrysalis comes forth in due time a radiant creature 
winged and beautiful. 

Although this winged creature itself dies, in 4ying it 
leaves behind, in the shape of a deposit of eggs, the 
promise and potency of new life. 

In a modified form this same law of progressive 
transformations, every transformation arising out of 
the destruction of a previous transformation, governs 
the life history of human beings. 

" We trace each human life," says C. T.Stockwell,* 
"back to what physiologists know as the graafian cell. 
This has a membranous external body and a nuclear 
inner body. The inner or nuclear body develops and 
finally leaves its old environment, the membranous 
part of the graafian cell, and is born into a new and 
independent existence. 

"It is now called an ovum, and the follicular envelope 
which constituted its former external body dies and 
becomes entirely disorganized, the life principle being 
transferred to the ovum. This in turn is found to 
possess an external and an internal or nuclear body. 
Being vitalised by the paternal life, the ovum now 
passes through a course of development analagous to 
that of the graafian cell. Its internal or nuclear 
centre develops into an embryo, while its external 

* "Evolution of Immortality" p. 125 (adapted.) 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 111 

environment develops into the placental mem- 
branes. 

"Finally, the embryo leaves this placental environ- 
ment or body, and is born into a new and independent 
existence, into the life of the world, while the placental 
body dies and becomes entirely disorganized.' ' 

The series of deaths and resurrections is not yet 
ended. Metamorphosis goes on. From the instant 
of birth an impulse carries forward the mind of the 
child and the body of the child, until a moment arrives 
when the child's mind and body exist no longer. In 
their stead are the mind and body of youth. Still the 
impulse gathers way, and bye and bye youth comes 
to an end and its place is taken by the mind and body 
of maturity. After a certain period maturity comes 
to an end. A moment arrives when the partnership 
of body and soul is dissolved. Their association 
ceases. How far in this case does the death of the 
old form the basis of a new association? 

Is it not a rational conjecture that as during the 
placental state, the embryo formed for itself a new 
kind of body, suitable to the new state into which 
it passed at the change called birth, so during our 
present existence, the inner life principle, the mind, 
the soul, is forming for itself a new body suitable to 
a new existence into which it will pass at the change 
called death? 

"May it not be," says Stockwell, "that in nature's 
transformation act falsely called death, she is simply 
relieving the natural body of its functional activity 
of embodying an individual personality, and trans- 
ferring that individual personality to an etheric 
body already present and at least potentially pre- 
pared to receive it?" 

"Death," says Butler, "may in some sort and in 



112 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

some respects answer to our birth, which is not a 
suspension of the faculties which we had before it, 
or a total change of the state of life in which we 
existed when in the womb, but a continuation of 
both, with such and such great alterations. "Nay, 
for aught we know of our present life and death, 
death may immediately in the natural course of 
things put us into a higher and more enlarged state 
of life, as our birth does, a state in which our capaci- 
ties and sphere of perception, and of action, may be 
much greater than at present.' ' 

" Perhaps," wrote Victor Hugo, "I am the tadpole 
of an archangel." Analogy suggests that in a general 
sense this surmise may not be far wrong. 

Throughout nature, so far as we can see, the law 
appears to be that death is the starting point of a 
further evolution of life, so long as there is anything 
further to be evolved. 

The principle of progressive growth remains opera- 
tive so long as there is anything to grow. 

If the soul has capacities for development still unused, 
then analogy denotes the likelihood that the end of 
the old conditions of progress will be the beginning 
of further progress, under new conditions, the basis 
of a new life in which the soul will be as inde- 
pendent of the dead body, as we are independent 
of our former placental bodies. That the soul pos- 
sesses such unused capacities is beyond dispute. 

"What a piece of work is man. How noble in 
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, 
how express and admirable, in action, how like an 
angel, in apprehension how like a god." 

The more closely we examine the human mind the 
more clearly apparent does it become, that within it, 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 113 

lies hid a vast fund of undeveloped qualities. Each 
stage of mental progress serves but to reveal the 
aptitude for still further progress. The more a man 
learns, the more he finds there is to learn, and the 
more capable he becomes of learning it. 

"So many worlds so^much to do, 
So little done such things to be." 

At the end of his work, Newton tells us, he felt as 
though he were still in the childhood of his intellectual 
career, as though what he had done were as nothing to 
what he might do were time and opportunity forth- 
coming. 

In demonstrating to his fellow men the marvelous 
nature of the universe, he demonstrated also the 
marvelous nature of the instrument by which the 
demonstration was made. He showed that the mind 
of man is an organism endowed with faculties of 
unlimited sweep and range. 

"The soul of man is larger than the sky, 

Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark 
Of the unfathomed centre. Like the ark 
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high 
O'er the drowned hills the human family 
And stock reserved of every living kind. 
So in the compass of the single mind 
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie, 
That make all worlds. 

[Hartley Coleridge] 

In addition, we are now confronted with a series 
of facts which seem to attest still further potentialities 
in the human constitution. 

Modern psychology demonstrates the existence of 
a hitherto unsuspected department, a sort of annex 
to, or extension of, our ordinary being. 



114 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

A subliminal being, or self, or consciousness, as it is 
called. 

Through the science of optics we have learned that, 
" beyond each end of the prismatic ribbon of the 
solar spectrum are ether waves, of which our retina 
takes no cognisance. Beyond the red end are waves 
we recognise not as light, but as heat. Beyond the 
violet end are waves still more mysterious, whose 
very existence men for ages never suspected, and 
whose intimate potencies are still but obscurely 
known.' ' . 

Even so it is with the mind of man. Enough has 
been achieved by experimental psychology to prove 
that beyond both ends of our conscious spectrum lie 
faculties transcending in range and force those in 
normal use. The self we know is but the fragment 
of a larger self which, so far as investigated, seems 
endowed with a more delicate sensitiveness, respond- 
ing to stimuli unfelt by our ordinary work-a-day 
consciousness. 

Yet these apparently immense intellectual and 
imaginative capacities, incalculably beyond those of 
average intelligence, remain almost in abeyance. 

Why then are they here? To what purpose have we 
been equipped with a whole arsenal of weapons 
which owing to the environment and conditions of 
this life, we can but occasionally, and partially, turn 
to account? 

When death brings its association with the body 
to an end, the soul is still in possession of a great fund 
of unused faculty. If the analogy of nature hold 
true, this suggests that the death of the body is the 
starting point of a new stage of existence for the 
soul, an existence in which its still unexhausted powers 
will find their field of exercise. 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 115 

Nature supplies the fledgling with rudimentary 
wings, the suckling with rudimentary teeth. In the 
life of nest and nursery there is no use for these 
organs. They are not demanded by the conditions 
which surround the young bird, and the babe. 

Time shows, however, that nature has not worked 
in vain. Presently a change occurs. Bird and babe 
enter a new life, come under new conditions. Wings 
and teeth superfluous under the previous order now 
find their proper sphere, and play their part, and put 
forth the powers that in them lie. 

Such examples point at least to the probability, 
that when nature furnishes a faculty she furnishes 
also somewhere, somewhen, somehow, a place and 
an opportunity for its exercise. 

Judging from its structure and capacities, the soul 
is made for further life, from which the legitimate 
inference is that it will be given further life. 

We shall be told, perhaps, that the inference is not 
warranted because on all hands we see the evidences 
of nature's extravagant waste. 

Out of every fifty seeds one only attains fruition. 
Of every million eggs, laid by bird, fish, insect, or 
reptile, but a few hundred are hatched. 

With regard to the destruction of ova, etc., there is 
much to indicate that these contain nothing that is 
not of so rudimentary, and therefore indeterminate, 
an order, as to be capable of development in one 
direction as well as in another. The experts seem 
pretty well agreed that in the lower forms of life 
differentiation has been carried but a very little way. 

"The embryos of vertebrates, whether fish, tortoise, 
dog, ape, or man, cannot be distinguished from one 
another, so close are the likenesses in outward 
form and structure.' ' 



116 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

If this be the case, it is difficult to see how the 
destruction of such embryos would imply waste, or 
deprive faculties of their fruition. 

In these instances destruction can mean no more 
than disintegration and readjustment, and aptitudes 
so undeveloped would find their required field and 
opportunity under the new conditions as easily as 
under the old. 

The embryonic qualities in a grain of wheat, for 
example, may be in a condition so undetermined as 
to be capable of development along more than one 
line. Which line it shall be depends on the char- 
acter of the external influences brought to bear. 

In one grain the development might be toward 
reproduction, while in forty-nine others, owing to a 
different set of external influences, it might be toward, 
let us say, alimentation, resulting in the forty-nine 
becoming flour and so entering into the substance of 
animal tissue instead of into the substance of a grow- 
ing crop. In either case, or in any conceivable alter- 
native, we should hardly have the right to say that 
the possibilities foreshadowed in the embryonic 
qualities of the grain failed of their fulfilment. 

The same applies to the animal kingdom. If the 
embryos of vertebrates be indistinguishable from 
one another, then given a million such embryos, and 
given a shiver of energy from without traversing their 
structure and starting them on the road of evolution, 
it is not essential that they should take any one 
particular path in order to complete their course and 
fulfil their destiny. 

This will be effected equally well, whether they 
turn out flesh, fish, or fowl, or something which is 
none of these. 

If some grow into dogs, and others into apes, it 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 117 

cannot be said of the apes the promise of their dog 
qualities was not fulfilled, nor of the dogs, the promise 
of their ape qualities was not fulfilled, because what 
was contained in those embryos was the promise 
neither of dog nor ape, but simply, so far as we can 
tell, the possibility in about equal degree of becoming 
dog or ape, or of passing by disintegration and re- 
absorption, into something neither dog or ape. 

Where a number of alternative possibilities are 
open, it cannot be called failure that in some instances 
this, in others that result emerges. Man, on the 
other hand, has advanced so far along the road of 
differentiation, that for him, alternative possibilities 
are eliminated. In his case escape from failure can 
be secured only on the condition that the advance 
already begun, he shall be enabled to continue. 

When we reflect that human beings have been pro- 
duced at the rate of millions a year for tens of thous- 
ands of years, and that if the soul dies with the body 
not one of all these millions ever has reached, or ever 
can reach, any thing like its full fruition, it seems 
improbable that the soul will be permitted to die with 
the body. It would mean the failure of the work of 
creation, not the failure of a certain proportion, but 
the absolute failure of the whole human department, 
a result irrational and unthinkable. 

Continued existence is indicated by the requirements 
of justice and mercy. 

Look at life, examine its salient features, consider its 
inequalities. There seems to be no rhyme or reason 
in them. We can discern no guiding principle. Al- 
though it is true that taken in the mass, good predom- 
inates in the world of sentient life, there are tens of 



118 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

thousands of individual instances in which it is very 
far indeed from predominating. 

People with the sensibilities of buff alos are born into 
the midst of elegance and luxury, while a Nathaniel 
Hawthorne has to hustle for a dinner, and a Jesus of 
Nazareth has not where to lay his head. 

Varieties of talent and temperament, even of mater- 
ial possessions, are to be desired. Were all exactly 
alike society would be less interesting. We do not 
mind living in a cottage while our neighbor inhabits 
a palace, if happiness be as plentiful in the one as in 
the other. It can scarcely be maintained that this 
is always the case. 

Here is the millionaire's son and here is the son of 
the mill operative. So favorable are the surroundings 
of the former that he reaps a bountiful harvest of 
delight while the latter reaps hardly anything at all. 
From the cradle to the grave life for him is a monoto- 
nous round of hard tasks, toil, effort, expenditure, 
with the most meagre of returns. 

Thousands of children are born annually who are 
blind, deaf, and dumb, defective in mind, diseased in 
bone and limb. Heaven has given them existence, 
but the existence heaven has given them is ghastly 
with wretchedness and pain. 

We have it on the authority of the Salvation Army 
that a tenth of the population of Great Britain, or about 
four millions, is " submerged,' ' that is, sunk in degrad- 
ing penury, and Mr. Robert Hunter tells us that in 
the United States there are something like ten million 
people in a similar condition. 

Without going outside the English speaking nations, 
therefore, we have fourteen million souls existing in a 
condition of chronic misery. From their more pros- 
perous neighbors they learn what happy homes and 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 119 

good food and pleasant surroundings are like, but 
though they long for, and endeavor desperately to 
obtain, these things, the rigid barrier of circumstance 
makes their efforts vain. Do what they may they are 
condemned to pass through life surrounded by comfort, 
yet themselves denied comfort, perpetually hungry 
while the markets and the stores are crammed with 
food. Under these conditions, each year millions die 
who, with a yearning for happiness implanted in their 
hearts, have never had that yearning satisfied. 

We have seen that goodness rules, that the universe 
is governed by a happiness producing power. It is 
unthinkable that the miseries of mankind can be 
regarded by such a power otherwise than with sym- 
pathy and compassion. 

This thought is expressed by William Blake in 
verses the strange beauty of which must serve as the 
excuse for quoting them at length. 

Can I see another's woe 
And not be in sorrow too? 
Can I see another's grief 
And not seek to find relief? 

Can I see a falling tear 
And not feel my sorrow's share? 
Can a father see his child 
Weep, nor be with sorrow- filled? 

Can a mother sit and hear 
An infant groan, an infant fear? 
No, no, never can it be 
Never, never, can it be. 

And can he who smiles on all 
Hear the wren with sorrows small, 
Hear the small bird's grief and care, 
Hear the woes that infants bear, 



120 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

And not sit beside the nest 
Pouring pity in their breast? 
And not sit the cradle near 
Weeping tear on infant's tear? 

And not sit both night and day 
Wiping all our tears away? 
No, no, never can it be, 
Never, never, can it be. 

He doth give his joy to all, 

He becomes an infant small, , 

He becomes a man of woe, 

He doth feel the sorrow, too. 

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh 
And thy Maker is not by, 
Think not thou canst weep a tear 
And thy Maker is not near. 

Oh he gives to us his joy 
That our grief he may destroy, 
Till our grief be fled and gone 
He doth sit by us and moan. 

That the supreme power should destroy our grief by 
destroying us is incompatible with justice and mercy. 

Worse than bodily suffering or material loss, is the 
poignant agony inflicted by the waywardness, the 
wickedness, the unworthiness, of those we love. The 
woman stricken by the villainy of the man she wor- 
shipped. The man faced by the proof that the woman 
who has been to him the impersonation of purity and 
goodness, is in her heart a wanton. The father and 
mother crushed by the horror of a daughter's shame, 
or sorrowing comfortless for the lost prodigal. 

Through such causes tens of thousands of blameless 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 121 

people are rendered desolate every year. There is 
but one remedy. Wounds thus inflicted, can be 
healed only by those who made them, only by the 
repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and rehabilita- 
tion of those by whom they were caused. If the 
grave be the end, then, this never can be accomplished, 
and injustice is done to a multitude of innocent souls. 
Moreover, there are the sinners themselves to be 
thought of. If death be the end, they are forever 
deprived of the opportunity to repent. It will not 
do to say they had their opportunity here, this is all 
justice requires. It is not all justice requires. In 
countless instances death overtakes the transgressor 
in the full tide of his wrong doing. He is snatched 
away before he realizes the enormity of his guilt, or 
realizing it, he dies too soon to permit him to make 
amends. 

Suppose two men are competing for a position. 
The opportunity comes to one of them to poison the 
minds of those who are to decide the issue, by causing 
damaging reports to be spread with regard to his 
competitor's character. He is perfectly aware that 
there is no truth in these reports, and he hesitates to 
perpetrate so treacherous and base an act. But 
then, his whole future depends on his obtaining this 
position. Success seems vital to him. All is fair in 
war, even a blow below the belt, he tells himself. 
This is his chance, and he must take it. Accordingly 
he turns a deaf ear to the voice of conscience and pro- 
ceeds to scatter his false, but plausible, insinuations. 
The result is he wins the coveted place and enjoys a 
career of uninterrupted prosperity, while the other 
man is left out in the cold. Years afterward he comes 
to see his conduct in a new light. Bitter remorse and 
shame fill his heart, he is anxious now to restore every- 



122 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

thing, to atone for everything, to suffer everything, 
if need be, so only justice be done and the wrong righted, 
but death's hand is laid upon his shoulder and it 
is too late. 

The founder of Christiantity laid it down as a 
fundamental principle of righteousness that when 
a sinner sincerely repents he shall be forgiven. In 
the example cited, and it is the type of an innum- 
erable host, repentance was genuine and sincere, yet 
if death be the end, forgiveness and the opportunity 
to make atonement are forever witheld. 

Criminals who enjoy crime for its own sake are in all 
probability but a small class. The vast majority 'of 
sinners fall into evil ways through irresolution, and 
their irresolution is due to lack of sensitiveness about 
right and wrong. They do not feel strongly enough 
about the matter. There is something they desire, 
they perceive it may be obtained by cheating and 
lying, and their sense of the imperativensss of right 
is not strong enough to prevent them from resorting 
to cheating and lying. 

The thief, the swindler, the drunkard, the forger, 
the seducer, the murderer, are what they are, in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, not because they 
are wholly bad, but because they are not quite good 
enough. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
slightly more favorable surroundings, right influences 
a little further prolonged, a little more skilfully 
applied, would transform the knave and the rogue into 
a hero and a saint. But in countless cases death cuts 
the thread of life before any such ameliorating in- 
fluences can be brought to bear. 

If it be possible to reform the knave and the rogue, 
do not justice and mercy require that they shall be 
reformed? 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 123 

For this, the one necessary condition is a continu- 
ance of their existence beyond the grave. 

Nor apart from a life to come can justice be done 
to those who have suffered for righteousness' sake. 
The glorious company of the Apostles, who in every 
age have carried knowledge to the ignorant, light to 
those who sit in darkness, and freedom to the slave. 
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets, who have faced 
angry monarchs and angry mobs. The noble army of 
Martyrs, who have endured great tribulation that 
others might have happiness and life. Brave souls, 
who, faithfully, patiently, and at cost to themselves, 
have obeyed the behests impressed upon them 
by the feeling about right. If righteousness be at 
the heart of things, then surely an obligation will be 
felt at least to acknowledge the loyalty with which 
its requirements have been fulfilled. 

In the eyes of a good man, it would be little short 
of a crime to accept the labor and sacrifices of others 
without rendering thanks. A good man would feel 
bound to do his utmost to show his appreciation. He 
would feel not merely bound to do it, he would be 
eager, he would rejoice exceedingly, to do it. 

Can we believe that the source of all moral feeling 
is less eager to discharge obligations than a good man? 

Nevertheless such discharge fails of accomplishment 
here on earth. Constantly do the souls of the faithful 
go down to death with no lightening of their burden, 
with no whisper of acknowledgment or well done. 

If the Controller of all things be a power that makes 
for righteousness, it is beyond belief that broken 
hearts should go uncomforted, the penitent unfor- 
given, sinners unreformed, or devoted service remain 
forever without acknowledgment. 

It is inconceivable that the one condition necessary 



124 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

for bringing these things to pass, namely a future life, 
should be withheld. Justice and mercy require that 
it should not be withheld. 

Yet another reason why justice and mercy demand 
that life should be continued beyond the grave, is 
the almost universal desire for it. "It is better to 
live in a slum in hopes of heaven, than to walk through 
luxury to a ditch in the churchyard.' ' The thought 
that death is the end may satisfy those who have 
loved only knowledge, it can never satisfy those who 
have loved human souls. You may con*e with 
your philosophy, and arrange your reason of despair, 
never so plausibly, but, 

"That little shoe in the corner 

So worn and wrinkled and brown, 
With its emptyness, .confutes you, 
And argues your wisdom down." 

Emerson in his "Thyrsis," Browning in his "Pros- 
pice," Tennyson in his "In Memoriam," Milton in 
his "Lycidas," utter in exquisite syllables the yearn- 
ing and the hope that burn in the souls of those from 
whom death has snatched their hearts' treasures. 
An awakened desire for immortality results from 
loving, because loving opens our eyes to the worth of 
life. Through loving, life becomes priceless. We 
can never have enough of it. The cultivation of 
friendship, sympathy, affection, stirs in us a deepened 
wish for the continuance of life, that the exercise of 
our affections may be continued. Through love and 
friendship the immortality once languidly desired 
comes to be passionately desired. The longing for 
immortality is thus due to the development, not of 
the foolish, selfish, immoral, but the sympathetic, 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 125 

and affectional, qualities of our nature. This has 
come about from the action upon us of the natural 
order. In the last resort it is due entirely to the 
influence over us of the universe. 

So to influence us, that the awakening of the most 
unselfish and elevating of emotions, and the establish- 
ment of the most beneficial of human relations, pro- 
duce an intense desire for a continued life after death, 
without any intention of satisfying that desire, would 
seem to be a peculiarly hard-hearted piece of deliberate 
cruelty. Since the desire has been aroused in us, 
justice and mercy require that it be satisfied. With 
goodness in the seat of power, have we not solid 
ground for hope that it will be satisfied? 

To restate in a few words the substance of the 
foregoing pages, we see the expectation of a life to 
come rests on five main considerations. 

1. Survival of the soul is probable, for the reason 
that not being made of destructible material, it is 
difficult to understand how it can be destroyed. 

2. For the reason that it is a spring and source of 
energy, and its destruction would involve both the 
loss of a unique contribution to the sum of things, 
and a breach of the law of the conservation of energy. 

3. Because of the probable preexistence of the soul. 

4. Because fathomless deeps of faculty exist in 
the soul, here unused and unusable, and the analogy 
of nature indicates that in such cases death is the 
basis of renewed life. 

5. Because justice and mercy demand survival, 
and since goodness rules, the demands of justice and 
mercy will be met. 

A presumption, therefore, exists in favor of im- 
mortality. In the known facts, not only is there 
nothing that makes the independent life of the soul 



126 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

impossible, there is much that makes it probable. 
Reason and observation are on the side of faith in 
the future. 

Yet for some this is not sufficient. It fails to 
assuage the inmost yearning of the heart. We desire 
to be convinced in a more intimate and personal 
way. We long for a sense of full assurance. 

Sources of Certitude. 

This longed for assurance is within our reach. The 
obscuring clouds may be dispersed, and a sense of 
certitude obtained, by any one who is willing to pay 
the price. Certitude implies a feeling of reality, a 
feeling of reality comes only with experience, and 
experience is a state of consciousness resulting from 
contact with our surroundings through our five 
senses. We may discourse to a blind man about the 
splendor of the starry heavens and he may accept as 
true all we say. Nevertheless, his state of mind with 
regard to what has been described will be compara- 
tively vague and cold. Before he can feel as we feel, 
he must be enabled to behold and see. That is to 
say, he must be enabled to come into sensuous con- 
tact with, to experience, the nocturnal glory of the 
sky. Then, and then only, will he feel that he knows. 
Not till then will his state of mind be one of con- 
viction and assurance. Consequently, the only way 
of winning certitude of the life to come would appear 
to be by contact with it through our five senses. 
The idea seems preposterous. How can we see, 
touch, hear, the invisible, intangible, inaudible? 
Yet apart from sight, touch, hearing, how is direct 
contact to be achieved? 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 127 

Certitude through Spiritism. 

Modern i( spiritualism" claims to have solved the 
difficulty. The notion that the invisible world is 
beyond the reach of sense is false, it declares. We 
may actually see the inhabitants of another world, 
hear the rustle of their spirit garments, feel the touch 
of their spirit hands, and through the agency of a 
"medium" or u sensitive" receive messages from the 
departed as easily as through the telephone, we 
receive a message from the friend in the next street. 

Notwithstanding these great claims, many thought- 
ful people are repelled by the vulgarity and stupidity 
which marks so much of what goes on at " seances." 
Moreover, the subject reeks of chicanery. The sur- 
rounding circumstances create in the mind of an 
impartial visitor a presumption of fraud. The 
darkened room, the mysterious cabinet, the wierd 
music, suggest the conjurer's art. Again and again 
these suspicions have proved to be well founded. 
Busy hands have been detected where no hands should 
be. The ghostly visitors from another sphere have 
been revealed when the lights were turned on, as 
beings of solid flesh and bone. "Properties" peculiar 
to the green room, have been discovered within 
the secret precincts where the medium was supposed 
to sit unconscious and entranced. We have but 
to recall the record of those accomplished tricksters, 
the Davenport brothers, Slade and Foster, or to 
read the narrative of investigations by Miinsterberg, 
and Jastrow, to feel convinced that modern spiritism 
is tainted with deception. 

Nevertheless it is not all deception. No movement 
which has influenced so many human minds can be 
wholly fraudulent. There is a basis and residuum of 



128 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

fact. Strange forces are undoubtedly brought into 
play. Powers more than normal are exercised. This 
residuum of fact, these abnormal powers, can be 
explained, however, so competent observers declare, 
on psychological and physiological grounds, without 
calling in the aid of spirits from the vasty deep, or 
from anywhere else. 

We are assured that all phenomena of spiritism 
not due to trickery may be accounted for, if they 
are physical manifestations, as the work of muscular 
automatism, the extraordinary condition in wjbich the 
limbs perform sometimes quite complex acts, (writing, 
drawing, etc.), independently of the will or even of 
the consciousness. 

If the phenomena be mental, (visions, clairvoyance, 
trance utterances, etc.), exhibiting an apparent 
knowledge beyond the normal, they must be regarded 
as the subconscious reproductions of latent memories, 
brought about by a more or less profound hypnosis, 
or as due to thought transference. Such, at least, is 
the conclusion arrived at by Podmore, one of the 
most careful of observers. 

In fairness to mediums it should be said that even 
where deception exists, there is reason to think it is 
not always conscious. It seems probable that fraudu- 
lent acts may be due sometimes to automatism, 
apart from the consciousness of the medium. This 
makes the practise of mediumship none the less mis- 
leading to those who seek for light through its agency. 

Taking into consideration how great is the tempta- 
tion to fraud, and how manifold are the opportunities 
for error, spiritism can scarcely be regarded as a safe 
or satisfactory way of establishing certainty with 
regard to a life beyond the grave. 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 129 

Certitude through psychical research. 

Are the conclusions of Podmore and others correct? 
Is the admitted residuum of abnormal fact in spiritism 
completely accounted for by psychological and 
physiological causes? 

The question can be answered only by further 
investigation. To carry out this investigation on 
unimpeachable and scientific lines, is the aim of 
psychical research, which has been described as "the 
patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena, 
some trace of the supernal world.' '- 

Founded about 1850, the "Society For Psychical 
Research," has carried on its labors with the one 
purpose of working by scientific methods for scientific 
ends. Slowly yet steadily the enterprise has pro- 
ceeded. Gradually, and in spite of innumerable 
difficulties, a mass of valuable material has been 
accumulated. Though results seem small, they are 
solid, and promise much for the future. "Beyond 
us still is mystery, but it is mystery lit and mellowed 
with an infinite hope." 

Sir Oliver Lodge thus summarises the present situa- 
tion. "The boundary between the two states, the 
known and the unknown is still substantial, but it is 
wearing thin in places, and like excavators engaged 
in boring a tunnel from opposite ends, amid the roar 
of water and other noises we are beginning to hear 
now and again the strokes of the pickaxes of our 
comrades on the other side." 

While the work of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search is of the highest importance, and should receive 
our financial aid, and our cordial and respectful 
sympathy, for many of us it will prove to be "no 



130 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

thoroughfare,' ' so far as the attainment of certitude 
with regard to the future life is concerned. 

The drawback is, that it must ever be ''caviare to 
the general." It is a recondite theme, illusive, diffi- 
cult, requiring for its successful prosecution, not only 
the utmost caution, the most wide awake vigilance, 
but careful preparation and technical training. 

The results achieved in this direction, must be for 
most of us, a matter of report. Intensely interesting, 
perhaps sufficiently convincing, but still for most of 
us, destined to remain secondary knowledge,' lacking 
the reality which only experience can give. 

Certitude through the mystical mood. 

Admitting that under ordinary circumstances the 
senses are the sole media through which we can achieve 
contact, and so gain experience, and that under 
ordinary circumstances they respond only to physical 
stimuli, is it not imaginable that there may be extra- 
ordinary circumstances, in which the nerves are 
attuned to a finer sensitiveness, so delicate as to thrill 
in temporary response to other than physical stimuli? 

In such abnormal states, is it not possible that 
without the aid of medium or seer, abnormal experi- 
ences may be obtained corresponding with truth, in 
spite of their abnormality? 

In all ages, individuals have claimed to have had 
periods of exceptional sensitiveness, peculiarly exalted 
and ecstatic moods, ct mystical states of mind," in 
which abnormal sensibilities are aroused and the 
conviction becomes irresistible that we are in actual 
touch with a life larger than our own. A few modern 
instances may be quoted. 

In his "journal," Emerson writes: 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 131 

"A certain wandering light comes to me which I 
instantly perceive to be the cause of causes. 

"It transcends all proving. It is itself the ground of 
being, and I see that it is not one and I another, but 
this is the life of my life. 

"That is one fact, then, that in certain moods I have 
known that I existed directly from God, and am as it 
were his organ, and in my ultimate consciousness am 
He." 

["Journal" 1837 pp. 848-9.] 

In the letters of James Russell Lowell, vol. 1. p. 75, 
occurs the following : 

"I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at 
Mary's, and happening to say something of the 
presence of spirits, (of whom I said I was often dimly 
aware), Mr. Putnam entered into an argument with 
me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking the whole 
system rose up before me like a vague destiny looming 
from the abyss. 

"I never before so clearly felt the spirit of God in me 
and around me. The whole room seemed to be full 
of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with 
the presence of something, I knew not what. I spoke 
with the clearness and calmness of a prophet. 

"I cannot tell you what this revelation was. I have 
not studied it enough. But I shall perfect it one day, 
and then you shall hear it, and acknowledge its 
grandeur." 

John Sterling writes in a similar vein : 

"I rode through some of the pleasant lanes in the 
neighborhood, and was delighted to see the primroses 
under every hedge. The whole aspect of the world 
is full of quiet harmony, that influences even one's 



132 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

bodily frame, and seems to make one's limbs aware 
of something living, good, and immortal, in all around 
us." 

[Carlyle's "Stirling." p. 215.} 

In a letter dated from Farringford, May 7, 1874, 
quoted in the London "Spectator'' Feb. 2, 1889, 
Tennyson wrote: 

"A kind of waking trance, (this for lack of a better 
name) I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, 
when I have been all alone. This has often come 
upon me through repeating my own name to myself 
silently, till all at once, as it were, out of the intensity 
of consciousness of individuality, the individuality 
itself, seemed to dissolve and fade away into bound- 
less being, and this not a confused state, but the clear- 
est of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly 
beyond words, where death was an almost laughable 
impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) 
seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am 
ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said 
the state is utterly beyond words." 

A like state of mind is recorded by A. C. Benson: 

"I walked today in sheltered wooded valleys, 
and at one point in a very sheltered and secluded lane, 
leaned long upon a gate that led into a little forest 
clearing, to watch the busy and intent life of the 
wood. There were the trees extending their fresh 
leaves to the rain, the birds slipped from tree to tree, 
a mouse frisked about the grassy road, a hundred 
flowers raised their bright heads. 

"And then I felt for awhile like a tiny spray of sea- 
weed floating on an infinite sea, with the brightness 
of the morning overhead. I felt that I was indeed 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 133 

set where I found myself to be and that if now my 
little heart and brain are too small to hold the truth, 
yet I thanked God for making even the conception 
of the mystery, the width, the depth, possible to me, 
and I prayed to him to give to me as much of the 
truth as I could bear. 

"And I do not doubt that he gave me that, for I felt 
for an instant that whatever befall me, I was indeed 
a part of himself, not a thing outside and separate, 
not even his son and his child, but himself." 

[" The Thread of Gold." pp. 223-b.} 

"And yet as angels in some brighter dreams 
Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, 
And into glory peep." 

wrote Vaughan, and Wordsworth describes a cor- 
responding mental condition in the famous lines 
beginning, 

"I have felt 
A presence which disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky and in the mind of man, 
A motion and a spirit that Impels 
All thinking things all objects of all thought 
And rolls through all things." 

For further instances see "Varieties of Religious 
Experience" pp. 66-72, 395, 396, 398, 221, William 
James. 

It appears, then, that human beings do on occasion, 
believe themselves to pass into states of conscious- 



134 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

ness during which they perceive in an experiential 
way, the reality of an unseen and superhuman world. 

The possibilities of supra normal perception seem 
now to be enlarged by the disclosure that we possess 
sensibilities other than those of ordinary sight, 
sound, touch, taste, smell, and that consequently 
we may not be so completely dependent on our 
five senses as has been supposed. 

"I cannot but think," says James ["Varieties" 
p. 233], "that the most important step forward that 
has occurred in psychology since I have been a 
student of the science, is the discovery first made 
in 1886, that in certain subjects at least, there is 
not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, 
with its usual centre and margin, but an addition 
thereto, in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts 
and feelings, which are extramarginal and outside 
of the ordinary consciousness altogether, yet must 
be classed as conscious facts of some sort, able to 
reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. The 
human material on which the demonstration has 
been made has so far been rather limited and in 
part, at least, eccentric, consisting of unusually sug- 
gestible hypnotic subjects, and of hysteric patients. 
Yet the elementary mechanisms of life are pre- 
sumably so uniform, that what is shown to be true 
in a marked degree of some persons, is probably 
true in some degree of all, and may in a few be true 
in an extraordinarily high degree. There is reason 
to believe that under special conditions, uprushes 
of energies originating in this extra marginal or 
subliminal mental region take place. " 

If our normal senses be capable on occasion, of 
more than normal sensitiveness, and if also, there 
be in us extra marginal faculties which, when brought 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 135 

into play greatly enlarge our perceptive capacities, 
and if nothing more be needed to raise normal senses 
above their normal sensitiveness, and to bring the 
extra marginal faculties into play, than a suit- 
able mental state, it is conceivable that given such 
a mental state, we may, either through the action 
of our more than normally sensitive ordinary senses, 
or through the transmarginal faculties, or through 
the cooperation of both, at once become aware of 
realities normally hidden from our view. Can a 
mental state of this kind be induced? 

In India training in mystical insight has been known 
from time immemorial under the name of "Yoga." 
"Yoga signifies the experiential union of the human 
with the divine. It is based on persevering exercise, 
and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual con- 
centration, and moral discipline, vary slightly in the 
different systems. The disciple who has by these 
means overcome the obscurations of his lower nature 
sufficiently, enters into a condition of supersensi- 
tiveness, and is face to face with facts which neither 
reason nor instinct can ever perceive. Then we 
know ourselves for what we really are, free and 
immortal." Christendom and Islam as well as 
India have produced schools of mystics who have 
claimed that through certain courses of discipline 
a state of trance or ecstasy may be induced, during 
which the world beyond is revealed to the inward 
sense. 

Coming nearer home, hypnosis suggests itself 
as possibly a means to the desired end. 

"There can be little doubt,' ' says F. W. H. Myers, 
"that under hypnotic conditions a state of sensory 
delicacy may be induced, which overpasses the 
ordinary level. Not only are the senses capable 



136 SOURCES OF FATIH AND HOPE 

through hypnosis of being raised to an abnormal 
degree of sensitiveness, but it would seem that 
sense capacities of an altogether new kind are some- 
times developed, decidedly different from those 
with which we are familiar." 

If our capabilities can be, under hypnotic conditions, 
so increased in power as to enable them to perceive 
hidden marks and objects, to warn us of impending 
dangers, etc., [see Myers "Human Personality" p. 
270,] why should not this increase of power enable 
them to discern also, the reality of an unseen world, 
lying beyond the sphere of our normal faculties, 
assuming that such a world exists? 

See works on Hypnotism, also the literature of 
Theosophy, and the "Proceedings," of the Society 
for Psychical Research. 

Certain modern writera affirm that the difficult, 
doubtful, and perhaps dangerous methods of hypno- 
tism, are not in the least necessary, the mystical 
mood of supranormal sensitiveness may be induced 
by comparatively simple means. See, "Ideal Sug- 
gestion," by Henry Wood. "The Power of Silence," 
by H. W. Dresser. "In Tune with the Infinite," 
by Trine. 

There are those for whom the gateways of the 
beyond are opened by music. 

Music stimulates the emotional side of human 
nature and sets its sensibilities and sympathies 
aglow. "Music," writes Hegel, "Builds no permanent 
fabric in space. It has no form. It is a voice out 
of the unseen. Itself invisible, with neither shape nor 
tangibility, music makes us susceptible to the invis- 
ible. It stirs within us, as nothing else can, a con- 
sciousness of the reality of the world unseen." 

As Abt Vogler declares in Browning's poem, 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 137 

"Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and 
woe, 
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear, 
The rest may reason and welcome, 'tis we musicians 
know." 

It has been held by some, by the Quakers among 
others, that to bring us into experiential relations 
with the unseen, little more is needed than quietness. 

The landscape is there, actinic forces from hill 
and tree and stream are playing upon the lens 
and sensitive plate, but there will be no picture 
unless the camera is held motionless. Forces from 
the unseen play upon the sensitive plate of the 
mind, but unless there is quietness, there will be no 
picture. 

"Be still, and know that I am God," says the 
old writer. Neither in the tempest, nor in the earth- 
quake, nor in the fire, was the prophet able to dis- 
cern the presence of the Lord. The still small voice 
was heard afterwards in the quietness. 

Wordsworth insists that it is only when our 
bodily powers are at rest that we are fully alive. 
He speaks of the blessed mood when, 

"Even the motions of the human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul." 

It is, he tells us, not by a restlessly inquisitive eye, 
but by an eye made quiet "by the power of harmony 
and the deep power of joy," that we see into the 
life of things. So too, he defends himself for sitting 
hour after hour on an old gray stone in apparent 
vacancy. 



138 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

"Nor less I deem that there are powers 

Which of themselves our minds impress, 
That we can feed this mind of ours, 
By a wise passiveness." 

Wordsworth's vision is, in his own belief, never 
thoroughly lucid until he is rapt by it far away from 
the ordinary alertness which is commonly called 
quickness of sense, and transported into a region in 
which he is alone with his thoughts, and all but 
unaware of the momentary changes going on around 
him. 

Even the mere man of the world is conscious that 
when he is "laid asleep in body" he often becomes a 
much more " living soul" for those things which he 
is most desirous to discern truly. As his senses sink 
to rest, he recalls errors of which he was unconscious 
when he committed them, or expressions on the 
countenances of his friends or rivals, w r hich till then, 
he completely ignored. And if this be so in relation 
to things essentially of this world, it is certainly much 
more so as to those deeper springs of motive and 
character which it takes a still deeper peace of spirit 
to perceive. We need a "wise passiveness' ' to inter- 
pret truly what we see." 

["Spectator," Aug. 6\ 1887.] 

While most of us, perhaps, are too incurably rest- 
less to attain by any such means the mystical mood 
of insight, there is evidence enough to show that 
certain natures find no insuperable difficulties in their 
way. They are able with comparative ease to bring 
their minds to that tranquil condition, of which the 
poet speaks, a mental state in which celestial in- 
fluences imprint themselves upon the soul, revealing 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 139 

with the convincing force of experience, the reality of 
the unseen. 

The churches have always taught that the mystical 
mood may be induced, and access to the unseen 
obtained, through the instrumentality of "prayer. 
Certitude is communicated to those who, under 
proper conditions, pray for it. 

Many have an ingrained prejudice against the 
notion of prayer. To seek information, or to seek 
anything, through this means seems like a return to 
the superstitions of the dark ages. We have been, 
perhaps, educated in an atmosphere alien to devotion, 
at least in the emotional sense. The Almighty, we 
have been accustomed to think, attends to his busi- 
ness and expects us to attend to ours. To a deputa- 
tion which came requesting that he would apoint a 
day of fasting and prayer on account of the cholera, 
Palmerston replied, "Pray with a broom in your 
hand. Go home and clean up." 

By fulfilling our part in life, by doing our duty, 
overcoming difficulties, conquering, achieving, we can 
best approach the Lord. There is in fact no other 
way of approaching him. To labor is to pray. Such, 
probably, is the confident conviction of a majority 
of educated people. 

Nevertheless, in all ages there have been men and 
women who have thought otherwise, who have felt 
that work is not the only way of communicating with 
the higher powers, who have held that we can pray 
with the mind as well as with the body, and that the 
former is often the more direct, and more immediately 
effective method. 

Said a scorner of religion to the fugitive slave, 
"Your feet, I guess, helped you more than your 



140 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

knees. " "But for the knees first," replied the black, 
"I should have had no courage for the feet." 

The doctrine of response to prayer. 

"Prayer," says F. W. H. Myers, "is a process of 
telepathic communication between our minds and 
minds above our own, which are supposed not only 
to understand our wish or aspiration, but to impress 
or influence us in return." 

Grounding their conviction on personal experience, 
saints have believed that sincere prayer is iii all cases 
effectual, that no call from earth to heaven, whether 
wise or foolish, goes without an answer, so long as 
the call is uttered in sincerity and truth. Everyone 
that asketh receiveth. It is a law, say the saints, 
that prayer is answered. Not a caprice, but a divine 
method, sure and certain as any law of nature. We 
can no more pray without result than we can open our 
shutters without letting in light, or raise the window 
without letting in air. 

The supplications of mankind ascend to no unten- 
anted abyss, but to the living source of affection and 
of sympathy. It is unthinkable, therefore, that 
they should be ignored. 

"Between the stirrup and the ground, 
He mercy asked and mercy found." 

Even the briefest of our appeals brings a beneficent 
rejoinder, 

Yet how many instances we recall when there 
seemed to be no rejoinder. When the passionate 
human cry went up to heaven, and the heavens were 
as brass. 

May it not be that in such instances the apparent 
absence of response is due to the unexpected shape 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 141 

in which the response comes? That very frequently 
it must come in unexpected shape, is surely inevitable. 

"We, ignorant of ourselves, 

Beg often our own harm, which the wise powers 
Deny us for our good, so find we profit 
By losing of our prayers." 

We pray for what we think would benefit us. 
Fortunately, the powers above answer, with a wisdom 
greater than our own. 

There are two ways of curing a diseased member. 
The affected part may be removed by a surgical 
operation, or the general health of the patient may 
be so improved, the tone and vigor of the whole 
constitution so increased, that the disease is overcome, 
and the difficulty ceases to be annoying. Obviously, 
a similar choice of methods is possible with regard 
to every one of the troubles and misfortunes of 
existence. Either the outward circumstances may 
be changed, and the obstacles removed from our 
path, or we ourselves may be changed to such an 
extent that what were obstacles before now cease 
to be so. 

Instead of modifying external conditions, our own 
condition may be modified. 

By the enlightening of our ignorance, and by the 
transforming of our weakness into strength, we can 
be delivered from all we need delivering from, just 
as fully, as though actual mountains were removed, 
or the order of nature itself reversed. 

The drowning sailor clinging to the tottering 
mast, shrieks to heaven to save him, if not for his 
own sake, then, for the sake of the little helpless 
ones at home. When morning dawns, his corpse 
lies stark and battered upon the rocks. 



142 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

Appalling as such an event appears it does not 
imply, necessarily, that the prayer of the forlorn 
mariner went unheard. It was possible for an answer 
to be given to that cry, instant, complete, and satis- 
fying, while still permitting the storm to run its course. 
If, in response to his appeal, the sailor's heart were 
suddenly suffused with peace, so that all fear vanished, 
while into the recesses of his mind a light penetrated, 
revealing beyond, a bliss unspeakable, and if, at the 
same moment, the divine solicitude watching over 
his fatherless home were made clear and convincing 
to him, so that all desire for this life, and all anxiety 
for his beloved ones, were taken away, would not 
death in the storm cease to appear as a calamity? 
Would not the removal of every misgiving be an 
answer to his prayer? 

The cripple pours forth a supplication for deliver- 
ance from his bed of pain, and if in response to his 
supplication a strength be imparted, making en- 
durance light, and quickening the soul with a sensi- 
bility that feels, even among the shadows of the 
sick room, something of the life and glory of the 
Celestial City, even though the mattress prison 
remain a prison, will not an answer have been vouch- 
safed, a change wrought, as effective as though the 
crippled limbs had been made straight? May not 
such infusion of additional and more potent mental 
qualities so transform the situation as to take 
away all in it that before was evil? As real and 
true a deliverance may thus be effected as though 
the evil itself had been removed. In fact, the evil 
has been removed, for those mental disabilities 
have been done away with, which alone made the 
conditions evil. 

Moreover, this method of answering prayer is of 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 143 

benefit to us in a way that no other method could 
be. Merely to strike obstacles from our path would 
relieve us from the necessity of enduring present 
pain, or of making immediate effort, but it would 
be likely to leave us enervated. On the other hand, 
by instilling into us an added measure of strength, 
insight, intelligence, affection, fortitude, not only are 
we helped effectively over present trouble, but our 
personality is invigorated. In this way the whole 
aspect of even the most destitute existence may be 
transfigured. 

Seeing that all prayers are answered, the only 
element of uncertainity is the form the answer will 
assume. In respect to a number of things, even 
this uncertainty is absent. Some things there are 
which we may look infallibly to receive. Patience, 
courage, hope, enlightenment, for instance, these 
are always granted. Such, in brief, is the doctrine 
of response to prayer. 

Since all prayers are answered, and since there are 
some things, as patience, courage, hope, enlighten- 
ment, which, when we pray for them, are invariably 
given, is it not likely that among these things is 
included assurance with regard to our future beyond 
the grave? Assurance of the future is of the same 
nature as patience, courage, hope, enlightenment, 
in that it is a desirable condition of mind and heart, 
and being of the same nature as these always granted 
things, we may reasonably believe, it also will be 
granted. Reference to the records of prayer exper- 
ience show that this has been the case. 

Why, if assurance with regard to death be for 
our benefit, do the higher powers wait to impart the 
benefit until we pray for it? Seed will not grow in 
soil that is uncongenial, or unprepared. Endowed 



144 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

as we are with a measure of independence, some 
cooperation on our part, probably, is essential. Must 
we not at least desire knowledge, and be in a condition 
to receive it, before it can be imparted, or do us any 
good? The light from stars so distant as to be 
invisible alike to the naked eye and to the strongest 
telescope, has, for centuries unknown to us, bathed 
the earth. Not until our astronomers exposed to 
those astral forces the surface of a sufficiently sensi- 
tive photographic plate, were messages from the 
invisible worlds received. As the increased sensi- 
tiveness of the photographic surface made it com- 
petent to receive and register hitherto imperceptible 
influences, so, many believe, will the increased 
sensitiveness produced by prayer, make our minds 
competent to receive and register hitherto imper- 
ceptible influences. 

Gradually, as the practise of prayer is pursued 
we become aware of new and non-sensuous impres- 
sions, which have stolen into the mind by way 
neither of eye nor ear, but through some hidden 
gateway. Little by little these impressions flood our 
souls, rising into every inlet, every ramification, 
every crevice, of the brain. They do not represent 
definite objects. We see no distinct images. Shapes, 
and forms, and colors, there are none. Primarily, 
they are impressions of proximity to something. At 
first indistinct, but, as a consequence of prayer 
continued, gathering substance, until there accumu- 
lates in the mind a sense of certainty that we are 
directly associated with a power of life greater than 
our own. 

As two musical notes brought into harmony, 
mingle into one combined note, so our life, brought 
into harmony with the divine life, is combined with 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 145 

the divine. The two pass into one another, and 
we thus experience the life that is beyond death. 
Our real relation with the unseen grows plain, we 
have a sensation about it of the nature of "an im- 
mediate perception, as if one touched something 
with one's hands.' ' 

In some such way as this the telepathy of prayer 
brings us by imperceptible degrees, to a consciousness 
of immortality. We find ourselves possessed of a 
happy sense of assurance, that, 

"To die 
Is to begin to live. It is to end 
An old stale weary work, and to commence 
A newer and a better." 

A mystical mood of mind and soul, in which, "death 
becomes an almost laughable impossibility." 

To this mystical mood of insight there remains 
still another means of access. While it may be won 
through prayer, it may be won also through Associa- 
tion. 

Granting that our five senses are the sole channels 
of communication with the world of material things, 
with the unseen world they are not necessarily the 
sole channels of communication. 

In another chapter we learned that there is no wall 
of partition between seen alid unseen. At every 
instant soul is in touch with Oversoul, human with 
superhuman, not through the ordinary faculties of 
sense, nor through the extra marginal faculties, but 
through that additional, yet still normal sense, which 
exists at the heart and core of our being, the sense, 
namely, of moral obligation, or the feeling about right. 

We saw that this extraordinary element in our 
nature is explicable in but one way. It can be ac- 



146 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

counted for only as the manifestation in our con- 
sciousness of a power superior to our consciousness, 
a power having its source and origin in a region above 
our consciousness. 

At this point, then, man comes directly in touch, 
not through his five senses, nor yet through his sub- 
liminal sensibilities, but through his feeling about 
right, with something more than man, with some- 
thing superhuman, and the attitude we assume 
toward this superhuman influence is bound to have 
an important effect upon our lives. < 

« Suppose we choose to shut our hearts against the 
sense of right, and to live as though we had none. 
The result is, that without disappearing altogether, 
it grows dim, shrinks as it were, into the background. 
On the other hand, if we answer the appeal made by 
this feeling, and take it as our guiding motive, it 
comes to occupy a leading place in our sphere of 
being, and our existence is profoundly modified. 

If association with nature instills into the heart 
of man, as Wordsworth affirmed, an awareness of her 
hidden significances, and awakes a " sense sublime 
of something far more deeply interfused," is it less 
reasonable that association with the feeling about 
right, the manifestation of the superhuman in the 
midst of our humanity, should prove also a path to 
insight, and lead to the growth in us of a new organ 
of vision, a new awareness of the presence of that 
superhuman world, of which, as we have seen, the 
feeling about right is an expression? That indeed, 
is what happens. Association with this feeling, con- 
tinued, developes in us a finer sensibility with regard 
to the invisible realities, until by stages too impal- 
pable to analyse, a point is reached when "obstruc- 
tions melt away, the light streams in, and the servants 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 147 

of conscience know themselves to be in touch with 
the unseen and the divine," because the unseen and 
the divine have been lived and experienced. Through 
such experiential knowledge there arises in us a new 
attitude of mind with regard to life and death. 

We begin to understand with ever growing clear- 
ness that "we ourselves are more than earth and 
clay," that in us, there is actually, and as a matter of 
fact, a superhuman element. We find ourselves pos- 
sessed, we know not how, except that it has come 
through accord with righteousness, of that immediate 
assurance of our kinship with the eternal, which 
experience alone can give. "Such a life slowly gathers 
and builds up a faith, a hope, a vision, which disarms 
the calamity of death, and creates an impetuous expec- 
tancy of the life beyond." 

Why then, when the means of enlightenment are 
so close at hand, does any one remain in doubt? 
There are various answers. For example, it is 
possible to deceive ourselves, and to imagine we live 
in the way that will bring enlightenment, when in 
reality we do nothing of the kind. We may lead a 
good life, be useful members of society, put ourselves 
to inconvenience, make sacrifices for other people, 
and yet be very far indeed from obedience to the 
feeling about right. 

It is, as a rule, both pleasant and profitable to be 
good. Prudence and sagacity, and worldly wisdom, 
alike impel toward an honest existence. Prompted 
by these motives alone, it is quite possible to go 
through life respected, esteemed, and honored, and 
to be at the same time further from the unseen world 
than the publican and the harlot. 

Motives of pleasure, convenience, prudence, saga- 
city, are excellent. Most desirable is it that we should 



148 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

be influenced by these impulses, but we shall be dis- 
appointed if we imagine thay will lead to a knowledge 
of the superhuman. 

Their tendency is in the opposite direction. They 
are practical motives. That is to say, they deal with 
the here and now, with present problems. They are 
concerned only with making existence more com- 
fortable, more prosperous. We cannot expect to 
find in them information about that with which they 
have nothing to do. 

Again, obedience to the feeling about right is a 
hard path to follow, not only because we are apt to 
imagine we are following it when we are in fact pur- 
suing a quite different road, but because in order to 
follow it we have sometimes to give up many things 
the heart desires. He who fulfils his moral obliga- 
tions, may find himself compelled to ignore prudence, 
do without prosperity, take poverty for his bride, 
and be willing to surrender, if need be, even peace 
and happiness. He will have to act from principle 
instead of from expediency, and regardless of the 
consequences to himself, to make for that only which 
is right. On every occasion he must ask, not is it good 
business, is it profitable, but is it just and merciful? 
Should profit and prosperity conflict with justice and 
mercy, he must give up profit and prosperity. He 
must cease to be, in short, what the world calls a 
practical man. He will be compelled to abandon half 
the methods of making money regarded by the com- 
mercial world as legitimate. He will be obliged to 
take the chance of business collapse and failure. He 
who is loyal to right principles may sometimes have 
to choose a path more perilous still, a path that 
leads not only to suffering but to death. A difficult 
road to pursue. Nevertheless, those who have forti- 



THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 149 

tude enough and persistence enough steadfastly to 
walk therein, those who in this moral strife, again 
and yet again, obey the still small voice, though they 
lose outward peace, and comfort, and riches, and 
worldly consideration, gain a new insight into the 
nature of things, an insight which reveals in close 
association with our own mortal existence, an exist- 
ence more than mortal. 

"The true knowledge," said Oliver Cromwell, "is 
not literal nor speculative, but inward, transforming 
the mind." Those who tread the narrow way come 
to understand, with an inward and transforming 
knowledge, with a knowledge possessing the con- 
vincing quality of a genuine experience, that, 

"Death is not 
So much even as the lifting of a latch. 
Only a step into the open air 
Out of a tent already luminous 
With light that shone through its transparent 
walls." 

Our conclusion is, then, that while reason and 
observation indicate the extreme likelihood of soul 
survival, assurance is to be sought through the 
mystical mood. This mystical mood results from the 
awakening of certain finer sensibilities, of which 
probably all of us have a shafe. 

Under ordinary circumstances these sensibilities 
are dormant, but they can be quickened into activity, 
by bringing to bear the proper influences. What the 
proper influences are, depends largely on tempera- 
ment. Some seem to require a prolonged and sys- 
tematic, and it may be a painful discipline, perhaps 
that severest of all forms of discipline, the loss of 
one they have truly loved. For others, "a wise 



150 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 

passiveness" suffices. For many music is the fitting 
agency, and the churches have always taught that 
whosoever will, may attain the mystical mood of 
awakened sensibility, and so win the desired cer- 
titude, through prayer. The mood of insight may 
be achieved also by association, steadfast and con- 
tinued association with that superhuman element 
which, as we have endeavored to show, is, to some 
extent at least, present in every one. 

Looking back at the road we have travelled, it will 
be seen that we have been dealing, not with tradition 
from the distant past, nor with fantastic theories, 
nor with strange and oriental cults, but with the 
sober facts of our own human nature, with the 
realities of our own souls. In these realities we have 
found a guide to the conduct of life, and the ground 
and reason for a great hope. 



THE END 



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